Globally, the food system and the relationship of the individual to that system, continues to change and grow in complexity. Eating is an everyday event that is part of everyone’s lives. There are many commentaries on the nature of these changes to what, where and how we eat and their socio-cultural, environmental, educational, economic and health consequences. Among this discussion, the term "food literacy" has emerged to acknowledge the broad role food and eating play in our lives and the empowerment that comes from meeting food needs well.  In this book, contributors from Australia, China, United Kingdom and North America provide a review of international research on food literacy and how this can be applied in schools, health care settings and public education and communication at the individual, group and population level.  These varying perspectives will give the reader an introduction to this emerging concept. The book gathers current insights and provides a platform for discussion to further understanding and application in this field. It stimulates the reader to conceptualise what food literacy means to their practice and to critically review its potential contribution to a range of outcomes.

Despite government claims that food is safer and more readily available today than ever before, recent survey evidence demonstrates high levels of food-related anxiety among Western consumers. While chronic hunger and malnutrition are relatively rare in the West, food scares relating to individual products, concerns about global food security and other expressions of consumer anxiety about food remain widespread.Anxious Appetites explores the causes of these present-day anxieties. Looking at fears over provenance and regulation in a world of lengthening supply chains and greater concentration of corporate power, Peter Jackson investigates how anxieties about food circulate and how they act as a channel for broader social issues. Drawing on case studies such as the 2013 horsemeat scandal and fears about the contamination of infant formula in China in 2008, he examines how and why these concerns emerge. Comparing survey results with ethnographic observation of consumer practice, he explores the gap between official advice about food safety and people's everyday experience of food, including a critique of ideological notions of 'consumer choice'. A captivating, timely book which presents a new theory of social anxiety.

Product Description: Critically reflecting on the interplays between food and care, this multidisciplinary volume asks ’why do individuals, institutions and agencies care about what other people eat?’ It explores how acts of caring about food and eating shape and intervene in individual bodies as well as being enacted in and through those bodies...read more

Product Description: The consumption and distribution of food, as well as its production, has become a major public policy issue over the past few decades; what we eat is no longer merely a private matter but carries significant externalities for wider society...read more

Product Description: The book The Polyphony of Food explores food as a multiple discourse in the context of Abraham. Maslow's theory of the hierarchy of human needs and motivations. In Maslow's theory food as a basic psychological need belongs to the tier of D (deficit) needs...read more

Product Description: This book explores the thoughts, values and opinions of home cooks, their practices and experiences, and the skills and knowledge they use to prepare and provide food. It provides new and challenging ways of thinking about cooking, examining and often contesting commonly-held beliefs and theories about the role of practical cookery lessons, dinner parties as showcases for culinary flair and the negative effect of convenience foods on home cooking and kitchen skills...read more