Food Choice Trajectories, Transitions, and Indigenous Knowledge

Abstract

Ecology of Food and Nutrition (EFN) promotes scholarly discussion and engagement on the holistic and cross-cultural dimensions of the study of food and nutrition. Articles published in this journal focus on foods and food systems not only in terms of their utilization to satisfy human nutritional needs and health, but also how social and cultural factors relate to food, food cultures, and nutrition. Only a handful of journals publish articles that explicitly address the intersections of food and nutrition, biology and culture, and policy and practice from a holistic and global perspective. It is this kind of scholarship that EFN seeks to promote. This issue of EFN includes seven articles based on scholarly research conducted in Latin America, the Dominican Republic, North America, Africa, and Asia. The articles focus on a range of topics including childhood and adolescent undernutrition and obesity, food transition and sovereignty, and indigenous knowledge. Pamela Weisberg-Shapiro and Carol Devine use the life course perspective to examine the extent to which adult food choice trajectories are influenced by childhood experiences with food among Dominican born women living in low-income neighborhoods in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and in Latino-majority neighborhoods in New York City. The authors report that Dominican Republic women participating in the study developed and maintained their food choices based on childhood experience with food. Nevertheless, changes in the social environment and increased purchasing power among sample women living in New York City resulted in the consumption of large quantities of food. These findings suggest that women’s food choice trajectories reflect not only their childhood experience with food, but also their individual social and economic environments. The article by Amy Henderson and Joyce Slater presents the results of a qualitative action research project that engaged the target community into developing, implementing, and evaluating the “Growing Roots” program to reduce food insecurity and improve dietary acculturation among newcomer families living in an inner city neighborhood in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The results of the study suggest that newcomers to Canada prefer food sovereignty, which aligns well with the growing food sovereignty movement of Canada’s indigenous people. The authors conclude that by actively engaging target communities into developing appropriate food security programs, one can ensure healthy food transition and acculturation, and improve health. The article by Jeyakumar and colleagues focuses on the prevalence of undernutrition among children living in urban slums in India. The authors used a cross-sectional study design to collect anthropometric and sociodemographic data to identify the prevalence of undernutrition and predisposing factors among children in 28 slum communities in Pune, India. Based on the results of their study the authors conclude that improving maternal knowledge about the importance of feeding practices for infants and children and promoting child immunization can reduce children’s vulnerability to undernutrition. ECOLOGY OF FOOD AND NUTRITION 2019, VOL. 58, NO. 5, 411–412 https://doi.org/10.1080/03670244.2019.1669884