Conversations With Food

Few things are as important as the food we eat. "Conversations in Food Studies" demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary research through the cross-pollination of disciplinary, epistemological, and methodological perspectives. Widely diverse essays, ranging from the meaning of milk, to the bring-your-own-wine movement, to urban household waste, are the product of collaborating teams of interdisciplinary authors. Readers are invited to engage and reflect on the theories and practices underlying some of the most important issues facing the emerging field of foodstudies today. Conversations in Food Studies brings to the table thirteen original contributions organized around the themes of representation, governance, disciplinary boundaries, and, finally, learning through food. This collection offers an important and groundbreaking approach to food studies as it examines and reworks the boundaries that have traditionally structured the academy and that underlie much of food studies literature.

Indigenous Food Systems addresses the disproportionate levels of food-related health disparities among First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people in Canada, seeking solutions to food insecurity and promoting well-being for current and future generations of Indigenous people. Through research and case studies, Indigenous and non-Indigenous food scholars and community practitioners explore salient features, practices, and contemporary challenges of Indigenous food systems across Canada. Highlighting Indigenous communities’ voices, the contributing authors document collaborative initiatives between Indigenous communities, organizations, and non-Indigenous allies to counteract the colonial and ecologically destructive monopolization of food systems. This timely and engaging collection celebrates strategies to revitalize Indigenous food systems, such as achieving cultural resurgence and food sovereignty; sharing and mobilizing diverse knowledges and voices; and reviewing and reformulating existing policies, research, and programs to improve the health, well-being, and food security of Indigenous and Canadian populations. Indigenous Food Systems is a critical resource for students in Indigenous studies, public health, anthropology, and the social sciences as well as a vital reader for policymakers, researchers, and community practitioners.

What constitutes a healthy diet? Mainstream media and advertisers would like you to think that the answer to this question is complicated and controversial. But science, fortunately, tells us otherwise. A Conversation about Healthy Eating brings together all the relevant science about healthy eating in one place, and it’s exactly that – a conversation; an informal discussion between a scientist and a friend about their eating habits,keeping the science firmly rooted in everyday life. The conversation moves from topics such as metabolism and digestion to gut bacteria, hormones, neuroscience and the immune system. All of these concepts are explained in accessible terms to help you understand the roles they play in maintaining a healthy diet. The conversation leads to the conclusion that staying lean and healthy simply requires avoiding the overconsumption of processed foods. While this is, of course, easier said than done, science also provides clear recommendations for how you can adapt your environment and lifestyle to make it possible. Rather than simply presenting you with the principles of healthy eating, this book will help you to develop a comprehensive understanding of the science behind the principles, including the evolutionary facts that affect the way we eat today. This understanding will allow you to ignore the noise in the media and to move forward with a healthy lifestyle that work for you.

"Conversations With Food" offers readers an array of essays revealing the power of food (and its absence) to transform relationships between the human and non-human realms; to define national, colonial, and postcolonial cultures; to help instantiate race, gender, and class relations; and to serve as the basis for policymaking. Food functions in these contexts as items in religious or secular law, as objects with which to bargain or over which to fight, as literary trope, and as a way to improve or harm health—individual or collective. The anthology ranges from Ancient Greece to the posthuman fairy underworld; from the codifying of French culinary heritage to the strategic marketing of 100-calorie snacks; from the European famine after the Second World War to the lush and exotic cuisines of culinary tourism today. "Conversations With Food" will engage anyone interested in discovering the disciplinary breadth and depth of food studies. The anthology is ideally suited for introductory and advanced courses in food studies, as it includes essays in a range of humanities and social science disciplines, and each author draws cross-disciplinary linkages between their own work and other essays in the volume. This thematic and conceptual intercalation, when read with the editors’ introduction, makes the collection an exceptionally strong representation of the field of food studies.

Climate crises, a global pandemic, farmer protests, diet-related diseases—all of these are telling us that the industrial food system threatens our health and the health of the planet and deepens systemic inequities, racism, and poverty. Using food as an entry to key issues—such as Indigenous-settler relations and anti-racism in the food movement— Earth to Tables Legacies: Multimedia Food Conversations across Generations and Cultures tells the stories of food activists from the Americas—young and old, rural and urban, Indigenous and settler—who share a vision for food justice and food sovereignty, from earth to tables. This visually stunning, full-color multimedia book generates rich conversations about food sovereignty through eleven photo essays and links to ten videos. Commentaries on each essay broaden the conversations with the experiences and perspectives of eighteen scholars and activists—both Indigenous and settler—from Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Facilitator’s guides offer creative ways to engage students and activists in critical discussions about these issues with links to other resources—text-based and visual, print and online. Visit the Earth to Tables website here.

Literature on the ethics and politics of food and that on human–animal relationships have infrequently converged. Representing an initial step toward bridging this divide, Messy Eating features interviews with thirteen prominent and emerging scholars about the connections between their academic work and their approach to consuming animals as food. The collection explores how authors working across a range of perspectives—postcolonial, Indigenous, black, queer, trans, feminist, disability, poststructuralist, posthumanist, and multispecies—weave their theoretical and political orientations with daily, intimate, and visceral practices of food consumption, preparation, and ingestion. Each chapter introduces a scholar for whom the tangled, contradictory character of human–animal relations raises difficult questions about what they eat. Representing a departure from canonical animal rights literature, most authors featured in the collection do not make their food politics or identities explicit in their published work. While some interviewees practice vegetarianism or veganism, and almost all decry the role of industrialized animal agriculture in the environmental crisis, the contributors tend to reject a priori ethical codes and politics grounded in purity, surety, or simplicity. Remarkably free of proscriptions, but attentive to the Eurocentric tendencies of posthumanist animal studies, Messy Eating reveals how dietary habits are unpredictable and dynamic, shaped but not determined by life histories, educational trajectories, disciplinary homes, activist experiences, and intimate relationships. These accessible and engaging conversations offer rare and often surprising insights into pressing social issues through a focus on the mundane—and messy— interactions that constitute the professional, the political, and the personal. Contributors: Neel Ahuja, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Matthew Calarco, Lauren Corman, Naisargi Dave, Maneesha Deckha, María Elena García, Sharon Holland, Kelly Struthers Montford, H. Peter Steeves, Kim TallBear, Sunaura Taylor, Harlan Weaver, Kari Weil, Cary Wolfe

"Snacks" is a history of Canadian snack foods, of the independent producers and workers who make them, and of the consumers who can’t put them down. Janis Thiessen profiles several iconic Canadian snack food companies, including Old Dutch Potato Chips, Hawkins Cheezies, and chocolate maker Ganong. These companies have developed in distinctive ways, reflecting the unique stories of their founders and their intense connection to specific locations. These stories of salty or sweet confections also reveal a history that is at odds with popular notions of “junk food.” Through extensive oral history and archival research, Thiessen uncovers the roots of our deep loyalties to different snack foods, what it means to be an independent snack food producer, and the often-quirky ways snacks have been created and marketed. Clearly written, extensively illustrated, and lavish with detail about some of Canadians’ favorite snacks, this is a lively and entertaining look at food and labour history.

'A must-read ... satisfying, rich ... loaded with flavour' Sunday Telegraph This book is a celebration of food. By food, Michael Pollan means real, proper, simple food - not the kind that comes in a packet, or has lists of unpronounceable ingredients, or that makes nutritional claims about how healthy it is. More like the kind of food your great-grandmother would recognize. In Defence of Food is a simple invitation to junk the science, ditch the diet and instead rediscover the joys of eating well. By following a few pieces of advice (Eat at a table - a desk doesn't count. Don't buy food where you'd buy your petrol!), you will enrich your life and your palate, and enlarge your sense of what it means to be healthy and happy. It's time to fall in love with food again. For the past twenty years, Michael Pollan has been writing about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: food, agriculture, gardens, drugs, and architecture. His most recent book, about the ethics and ecology of eating, is The Omnivore's Dilemma, named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire, A Place of My Own and Second Nature.