25pgs, se programs in the peer-reviewed literature, the objectives were to identify factors that facilitate or hinder the implementation of these two local value chain models of healthy food access and to identify the perceived impacts from the perspective of the sites implementing them. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with CFS (n = 7) and DS (n = 10) site representatives in January 2020. Template analysis was used to identify themes through a priori and inductive codes. Participants identified two primary facilitators: support from partner organizations and on-site program stewardship. Produce (and program) seasonality and mitigating food waste were the most cited challenges. Despite challenges, both CFS and DS sites perceive the models to be successful efforts for supporting the local economy, achieving organizational missions, and providing consumers with greater access to locally grown produce. These innovative programs demonstrate good feasibility, but long-term sustainability and impacts on other key stakeholders merit further investigation.
University of Tasmania, 10 pages, At the same time as overweight and obesity have come to dominate population health priorities in most western countries, food programming takes up more time on western television screens than ever before. This has resulted both in increased televisual representations of so-called ‘unhealthy’ foods (such as butter, cream and fatty red meats), and in greater public health scrutiny of the preparation and consumption of such foods. This article explores this paradox via a case study of MasterChef Australia, the most successful iteration of the popular MasterChef franchise. At a time when the ‘obesity epidemic’ has been a particular focus of Australian public health promotion, MasterChef Australia revels in the apparently ‘excessive’ use of saturated fats, especially butter, a food routinely declared by Australian health advocacy bodies as one to be avoided. This article argues that MasterChef Australia offers an alternative to puritanical nutrition discourses – not, on the whole, by explicitly contesting them, but by presenting food in ways that such discourses are largely irrelevant. The public health concerns generated by this use of butter on MasterChef Australia offer important insight into current debates about food and health, and, in particular, into the limitations of current public health communication strategies.
14 pages., Food ecologies and economies are vital to the survival of communities, non-human species, and our planet. While environmental communication scholars have legitimated food as a topic of inquiry, the entangled ecological, cultural, economic, racial, colonial, and alimentary relations that sustain food systems demand greater attention. In this essay, we review literature within and beyond environmental communication, charting the landscape of critical food work in our field. We then illustrate how environmental justice commitments can invigorate interdisciplinary food systems-focused communication scholarship articulating issues of, and critical responses to, injustice and inequity across the food chain. We stake an agenda for food systems communication by mapping three orientations—food system reform, justice, and sovereignty—that can assist in our critical engagements with and interventions into the food system. Ultimately, we entreat environmental communication scholars to attend to the bends, textures, and confluences of these orientations so that we may deepen our future food-related inquiries.
