Mecklenburg County Food Security Assessment
Mapping Availability, Accessibility, and Affordability of Healthy Food at Neighborhood Scale
Between 2024 and 2025, Mecklenburg County partnered with Metabolic Institute to develop a highly granular spatial assessment of food security across the County. The project introduces an innovative, data-driven methodology to understand how access to healthy food varies across local communities. It captures not only where food is available, but also whether it is affordable, accessible, and nutritious.
By combining geospatial analysis with local policy priorities, the assessment equips decision-makers and communities with actionable insights to address food insecurity and nutrition disparities across Mecklenburg County.
- Client: Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (USA)
- Period: 2024–2025
Healthy, affordable food is not equally accessible across Mecklenburg County
Despite the presence of more than 4,000 food businesses, food insecurity remains a persistent challenge in Mecklenburg County, affecting around 12% of households. Existing food access assessments often rely on coarse spatial units and binary classifications, which can obscure local disparities—particularly for low-income households living within otherwise affluent neighborhoods. The challenge addressed by this project was to move beyond traditional food desert metrics and develop a neighborhood-scale understanding of food availability, affordability, and accessibility that better reflects lived realities and supports targeted, equitable policy interventions.
A granular spatial method reveals where and why food access gaps persist
Metabolic Institute developed a new spatial food security methodology that captures how residents experience access to healthy food in their daily lives. The approach assesses food security across three interconnected dimensions – availability, accessibility, and affordability – by combining high-resolution spatial data on food retailers and food-away-from-home outlets with transport networks, travel times, and household income data at census block-group level. Moving beyond traditional food desert classifications, the method identifies Nutrition Scarcity Areas where low-income households lack access to healthy and affordable food, including pockets of vulnerability within otherwise affluent neighborhoods. Alongside analytical reports and guidance documents, Metabolic Institute co-designed an interactive digital dashboard with Mecklenburg County, enabling policymakers, practitioners, and community organizations to explore local food security patterns and support evidence-based decision-making.
Data-driven insights empower targeted and equitable food security action
The Food Security Assessment provides Mecklenburg County with a robust, actionable evidence base to inform nutrition and public health policy. The project delivers a granular understanding of where food insecurity persists, why it occurs, and which policy levers can most effectively improve access to healthy and affordable food. By translating complex spatial analysis into an accessible digital dashboard, the assessment empowers local communities and decision-makers to identify priority areas, assess policy options, and design targeted interventions across food retail, transport, and urban planning. Together, these outcomes support a more equitable, data-driven approach to improving food security across the County.
- Explore the interactive Mecklenburg County Food Security Assessment Dashboard.
