The Nordic Food Policy Lab has produced an online “Cookbook for systems change”, co-authored by former Table colleague Marie Persson. Using a “mission-based” approach, the Cookbook sets out strategies that can be used to trigger food systems innovation. It is primarily aimed at national and regional government innovation bodies, but also discusses the role that entrepreneurs, civil society and researchers can play.

This book, published February 2021, uses case studies from across the globe to discuss the future of food. Chapters cover food and place identities, politics of agricultural production, food trade, hunger and malnutrition, food insecurity in rich countries, and future scenarios for sustainable food and farming.

This paper reviews the effectiveness of government obesity policies in England for the period 1992 to 2020. It finds that these policies have tended to rely on the behaviour changes of individuals and avoid more interventionist approaches, that governments do not regularly assess the effectiveness of past obesity strategies, and that obesity has not become less prevalent despite 14 different obesity strategies being published over the period of study.

This paper outlines the political, economic and cultural factors that present a challenge to efforts to reduce the consumption of red and processed meat (RPM), particularly in high-income settings. The study focuses mainly on high-income countries such as the US, UK, Australia and Sweden.

This report by the Cornell Atkinson Centre for Sustainability and Nature Sustainability examines the technological scope for moving to food systems that are healthy, equitable, resilient and sustainable. It finds that successfully scaling up promising technologies depends on specific “biophysical, political, socio-economic, and cultural contexts”, and therefore proposes creating “socio-technical innovation bundles” that are customised to the relevant context.

This book discusses a set of legal cases that have been settled recently within the United States Department of Agriculture regardings its treatment of farmers from different ethnic and gender backgrounds. It explores how these cases link to current trends relating to food justice in the wider food culture.

This open access book explores the conditions that support or hinder the transition of the food system towards agroecology: rights and access to nature; knowledge and culture; systems of economic exchange; networks; equity; and discourse. 

This book by Bram Büscher explores how environmentalists are using the internet and social media platforms to spread their messages, and considers the power dynamics that are at play in the era of “post-truth politics”.

The UK’s Food, Farming and Countryside Commission has launched a new website called Trade Unwrapped, which aims to host conversations about “decisions being made about the UK’s new trading relationships and the impact they’ll have on our everyday lives.”