New research from The University of Texas at Dallas suggests food deserts might be more prevalent in the U.S. than the numbers reported in government estimates. Their findings indicate that crowdsourced information gathered from mobile apps such as Yelp could help provide more accurate real-time representation of food deserts in impoverished communities. “The number of food deserts may be a lot larger than what the USDA says it is.”The USDA considers three metrics when identifying “food deserts,” areas where residents lack access to fresh and healthy food: income, car ownership and distance to the nearest supermarket. Nine census tracts were identified as food deserts based on the USDA’s 2015 data only. Using 2018 Yelp data alone, the researchers identified 50 census tracts — mostly in south Dallas — as food deserts.