Editor’s note

This issue of Food, Culture & Society reflects the way that the diverse approaches and concerns of Food Studies often dovetail in their conclusions. We take many paths to the same destination. An article about representations of food in fiction and a pedagogy piece about teaching food studies both offer ways to keep attention on the unseen labor that produces food. Two other authors think about the construction of healthy food in different populations and times to conclude that the concept is never fixed or neutral and always available to be misused.

In an ambitious research project, Bendegul Okumus studied American millennials’ food choice rationales and discovered a very specific but not necessarily scientifically grounded notion of what is healthy that indicates generational differences in food values. Alexandra Widmer’s article also explores rhetorical constructions of “healthy food” and draws attention to the potential biases in nutritional methodology by critiquing a 1960s study of metabolisms and food cultures in Australia. The unquestioned “nutritional primitivism” that shaped the study had potentially lasting effects on how diverse populations are understood to make food choices. Widmer’s conclusion makes Okumus’s findings all the more interesting to interrogate for power dynamics.

Angela Rosa Piergiovanni addresses a different kind of health, more collective than individual, in an article that considers the perseverance of cultural foodways. Piergiovanni explains how a humble legume can be equally staple food, ceremonial object, and symbol of changing culinary cultures in modern Italy.

Two articles in this issue explore how reading literature for food references can reveal truths about lived experiences. In one, Keith Bletzer argues that writing about migrant agricultural workers in the United States uncovers distinct cultures around foodways that are not otherwise noted in research on agriculture or labor. Steven Farry reads drama by and about aboriginal people in Australia for evidence of the impact of imperialism on traditional foodways and food sovereignty. By presenting fiction as a medium constructed from elements of reality, these authors encourage us to look for truths about foodways in imagined worlds. Both articles also have the added benefit of introducing readers of the journal to fiction writers who they can be sure will engage with food – not always the case, alas.

In this issue’s pedagogy article, Sarah Cramer, Leslie Touzeau, and Mary Hendrickson argue for the vital importance of engaging with food equity at America’s Land Grant institutions. Writing from experience, they offer a meaningful example of a class that successfully made this connection. Student responses to the first iteration of the course offer very encouraging evidence that even just one class, taught reflectively, can alert students to the structural inequalities in food systems and agriculture and empower them to look for ways to make positive change. Of their new awareness, one student said, “So like, maybe it’s a burden but everyone else has been carrying the burden for so long, maybe it’s my turn.”

Book reviews in this issue, curated by the tireless Emily Contois, cover important new works in food history, US food policy, and an exciting new guide for teaching hands-on food science. Peter Scholliers’ lively review of Nicola Humble’s new exploration of food in English literature suggests this book might be good to read alongside the literature-focused articles in this issue. As I write this one day after America’s Independence Day, I want to draw particular attention to Rodney Thomson’s review of Rachel Hermann’s No Useless Mouth. Hermann’s book is a long-overdue exploration of early American food policies and the exclusionary origins of US contemporary food systems.