Food Studies: Adding Nuance to the Sustainable Food Systems Dialogue

First paragraphs:My motivation to review Conversations in Food Studies grew from a desire to understand how we can approach complex problems—changing attitudes and beliefs about diet, incor­porating social and environmental values into agricultural production, and addressing structural inequalities—to reduce poverty and food insecurity.My work with various communities both in Canada and abroad has yielded this insight: the technical barriers to achieving a just and sustainable food system (such as growing food all year in northern climates and increasing crop yields) are more easily overcome than the socio-cultural and behavioral barriers. What is critical for food system transformation is an understanding of the human component; this is the task of food studies schol­ars. This defining volume tackles socio-cultural obstacles to a just and sustainable food system through work reported in a cross-sectional snapshot of predominantly Canadian scholarship, in the interdisciplinary field of food studies....