I don’t even know if a grocery store’s customers can fit within a one mile radius circle without urban density.
I also couldn’t reasonably live where I am at all without a car or regular assistance.
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g...
Many people would consider small towns "rural" but if the town is small enough, it can be an entirely "walkable" "urban" area - because there's a walmart, a gas station, and a hospital, all in a town that is less than a mile across.
But we don’t have a meaningful commercial area at all in the town.
And I’m not walking anywhere except recreationally in the woods.
Places where nearly everyone has a working car and can generally afford gas, whether rural or not, generally won't be food deserts unless stores selling affordable healthy food are all pretty far away.
If the convenience store across the street from my city apartment that has bananas, onions, garlic, and a wide assortment of frozen, canned, and dehydrated food doesn't count, the rural local general store likely also doesn't count.
Sadly, some percentage of people don't WANT to eat healthy.
(The local convenience store has many staples like bananas, onions, potatoes, etc, and cheaper than Walmart.)
It seems clear the default was chosen to use round numbers, be easy to calculate, and make the issue seem more important. Stricter criteria mean fewer people fall into the category, but it also means those people have more significance challenges.
I guess YMMV on this one. When I drive through suburbs, there are always people walking there. Watch especially how the staff arrives at your suburban stores & restaurants.
You are very clever to point out that people can actually walk around in a suburb, doesn't change the point.
This conversation is by definition about people living on the margins. Similarly, the "vast vast majority" of people do not qualify for SNAP.
Pointing out that most people don't live on the margins is clever, but not particularly relevant, in a discussion about people who live at the very edge of society.
In other words, we have two things, and want to make one the cause of the other, but that's not entirely clear. Maybe the grocery stores die in areas where the population doesn't frequent grocery stores for whatever reason, or maybe people don't frequent grocery stores because they died, or maybe a mix of both.
In public policy the question is generally if something has a measurable impact, and if that impact is worth the investment. Multiple small but very cheap improvements may be better than large but extremely expensive ones.
Food deserts are a symptom of a problem, but the solution isn't necessarily to directly treat that symptom.