There's been a lot of buzz about the term "food desert." A food desert is generally described as a low-income urban (or rural) area, where there is little or no access to healthy, affordable foods, often accompanied by a glut of fast food restaurants and convenience stores and a high percentage of residents who do not own a vehicle.Nashville has three identified food deserts: East Nashville/Cayce Homes, Edgehill, and North Nashville/Charlotte. Describing a neighborhood as a food desert relates solely to the residents’ inaccess to healthy foods; it is neither a commentary on the vibrancy of the community, nor a condemnation of the conditions which exist in the neighborhood.While food desert is fairly descriptive of the issues facing Nashville's communities, the other terms that have come up have included "food swamps," "food apartheid," and the ideal situation, a "food oasis." In the midst of all the blogs and banter about whether a food desert is insulting to environmentalists who argue the deserts are full of life, I started thinking about whether it was really important to talk so much about semantics when the issues facing so many of Nashville's residents seems to take precedence.If we're going to talk about naming the problem, we should also talk about the problem itself. The idea behind “food swamp” is that there is a glut of bad food and not enough good food. “Food apartheid” is all about the racial injustice that created the food deserts. In my frustration, I responded to one of the listservs by throwing out the name "food Sargasso Sea," where we are immobilized in an enormous body of poor food options.Honestly, the most important thing to me is the resolution of the issues, while including residents. The fact that there are food deserts in Nashville is disgraceful. The knowledge that if we act as a community to bring about change and ensure that all Nashvilleans have access to affordable, healthy food options is not only encouraging, but energizing.Call our areas of healthy food inaccess what you will, but if you are interested in working towards addressing the issues, please call me.To get involved with Re/Storing Nashville, please contact Miriam Leibowitz at miriam.leibowitz@vanderbilt.edu or (615) 498-7926.