Grocery store records reveal London food deserts

(Press-News.org) A new study identified large clusters of food deserts, where residents have limited access to affordable, nutritious food, in East London—particularly Newham, Redbridge, and Barking and Dagenham—and in parts of west London such as Ealing and Brent. The findings were published November 6th in the open-access journal PLOS Complex Systems by Tayla Broadbridge of the University of Nottingham, UK, and colleagues.

Poor diet and unequal access to healthy food are linked to rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. To effectively target interventions to areas where residents face barriers to accessing healthy food, identifying these food deserts is necessary.

In the new study, researchers used the Tesco Grocery 1.0 dataset, a record of 420 million food items purchased by 1.6 million Tesco Clubcard owners who shopped at 411 Tesco grocery stores across London in 2015. Transactions were linked to geographic areas of the residential address associated with the Tesco account, but otherwise anonymized.

The study revealed distinct geographic areas where residents purchased more high-sugar, high-carbohydrate and processed foods and less fresh, high-fiber and high-protein options. Inner north-west boroughs had the most nutritious purchase trends, while those in East London and the western boroughs had the least nutritious shopping records. The researchers developed a statistical model to analyze what sociodemographic factors could predict these food desert areas and found correlations that varied by region.

In the east and west of London, higher income was associated with nutrient deficient purchases while it was associated with more nutritious purchases in the inner-west. More car ownership was associated with more nutritious purchases in a small region of London’s north-west, but with nutrient deficient purchases in the east, west, and north-west. Higher proportions of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic residents were associated with nutrient deficient purchases in the west, northeast and inner-east food deserts.

Overall, the model explained much of London’s variation in food purchasing, highlighting areas most at risk of nutrient-deficient food purchases.

“Our findings demonstrate the potential of analyzing food purchase data to identify food deserts and their drivers, and suggest that area-specific, context-sensitive interventions are necessary for the implementation of local public health strategies,” the authors say.

The authors add, “We are rethinking food deserts: purchase data, not supermarket locations, shows the reality of access to healthy food in London.”

“A map of stores only shows potential access—our data shows reality, revealing where Londoners’ diets are nutritionally deficient.”

 

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Complex Systems: https://plos.io/4nfSdfN

Citation: Broadbridge TP, Green JEF, Preston SP, Fadai NT, Maclean J (2025) Food purchase data reveals the locations of London’s ‘food deserts’. PLOS Complex Syst 2(11): e0000072. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcsy.0000072

Author countries: Australia, United Kingdom

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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