The term "food desert" was coined to describe areas with limited access to healthy food. There are food deserts all over Britain, in rural as well as urban areas.

The healthy-eating boom that swept muesli-belt Middle England through the 1980s by-passed Tipton. Money was too tight. Like thousands of other communities across Britain, it had been transformed by the exodus of the big supermarkets to out-of-town greenfield sites into what the experts call a 'fresh food desert'.

Such reflections always remind me of a holiday (actually it was our honeymoon, which for those keen on trivia is known as la lune de miel in French) to New Caledonia, surely more of a food desert than anything outside five kilometres from the centre of Melbourne.