Vol. 9 No. 1 (2022): Critical perspectives on food guidance

Guest editors, Jennifer Sumner and Ellen Desjardins, in collaboration with Canadian Food Studies / Le Revue Canadienne des études sur l’alimentation, are pleased to present Critical Food Guidance: a focal point for thinking about food system change.

This themed section asks three basic questions: critical guidance for what, for whom, and by whom? While engaging with these questions, the authors have put forward critical concepts, proposed mindful decision-making, provided contexts for transformation, and presented innovative applications—all with the purpose of spurring broader thinking about food choices that can benefit both food system sustainability and human health.

To this already extensive collection we add two Perspectives that set out to “seize this COVID moment” to address the structural inequalities Canadian society is built upon (Martha Stiegman) and to articulate the need for profound changes to the ways in which we produce, process, trade, and consume food (Marit Rosol and Christoph Rosol). Tina Moffat et al. then take us through accounts of two youth food programs operating at a Community Food Centre in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Janie Perron and Amanda Shankland round out this issue with their reviews of Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture by Emily J. H. Contois and Facing catastrophe? Food politics and the ecological crisis by Carl Boggs, respectively. (Photo by Danny Wick of DCW Fishing Sales, Vancouver Island).