Other Ways of Knowing Food

Abstract

This conversation is part of a special issue on “Critical Nutrition” in which multiple authors weigh in on various themes related to the origins, character, and consequences of contemporary American nutrition discourses and practices, as well as how nutrition might be known and done differently. In this section authors discuss the impoverishment of nutritionism as a way of knowing and engaging with food, highlighting how nourishment is not amenable to either simplification or standardization. Some call for alternate ways of knowing food, through revitalizing tradition and culture, for example, and some emphasize engaging food through the senses. One author is skeptical that these other ways of knowing food can address real nutritional deficiencies.