You can Google & see that it was called that after a 1999 UK study. Opinion is one thing....a fact a whole other animal.
Oh, so this study said that these things exist in the United States? NO! She had absolutely no data to suggest that this was an actual problem in the US. Shortly after she started talking about “food deserts” some one looked at the actual demographics and found that there was no such thing. She made up the idea that this was a problem that affected the American population.