Former James Beard Foundation Vice President of Impact Katherine Miller shares the essential techniques she developed whilst training chefs to be policy and change advocates. These include learning how to focus efforts, identify audience, develop arguments, recruit allies and catch attention in the media landscape. 

Beyond the Kitchen Table is a collection of articles on the role of Black Women in global food systems. Topics include the contribution of black women to community building, matrilineal food-based education, the role of networks in addressing food insecurity, intersectionality in the food system and more. 

The narrative that individuals are responsible for their food choices and dietary health forms a large part of political and media messaging. This report demonstrates that behaviour is in fact influenced by a wide array of factors that are out of the consumer’s control and that effective policies to improve dietary health need to go further than nutrition and cooking education and public health campaigns.

This report is a follow on to The Farm to Fork strategy, announced by the European Commission in 2020, that presented a series of policy goals based on the assumption that consumers choose food through a rational and reflective process. Incorporating scientific evidence that consumer choice is actually largely influenced and restricted by food environments, this report sets out a set of recommendations for a mix of policy interventions to overcome the barriers that are preventing consumers from adopting more sustainable and healthier diets.

Maintaining biodiversity is key to a healthy food system; for example it is critical for the functioning of agroecosystems (influencing factors like soil health and the hydrological cycle) and it ensures genetic diversity in crops and animals. This paper assesses whether biodiversity-focused nature-base solutions (NbS) - the management and utilisation of nature to address sustainability challenges - provide a viable solution to the challenge of maintaining both biodiversity and a sustainable food system.

The Amazonian dark earth (terra preta) is not only incredibly fertile but is also a substantial carbon sink. However, whether or not this soil was formed intentionally through indigenous land practice has long been unclear. This paper uses soil analysis and ethnographic observation to demonstrate similarities between ancient and modern dark earth formation by indigenous communities, and to quantify the benefits these practices could have for soil fertility and carbon sequestration.

Improving soil health and soil biological communities through agroecological management approaches will be essential for mitigating the environmental impacts of agricultural intensification in the future. In order to demonstrate some of the values of agroecological practices, this meta-analysis estimates the value of soil biological communities through the earthworms impact on the productivity of global cereal and legume crops.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has emphasised the need for unimpeded access to allow food supplies to reach affected populations in the Gaza strip. A representative from the WFP commented that "as the conflict intensifies, civilians, including vulnerable children and families, face mounting challenges in accessing essential food supplies”.

The new American Heart Association Presidential Advisory board has recommended creating a robust evidence base for increasing the adoption of clinical Food is Medicine programs in the US. These programs recognise the importance of nutrition in preventative treatment of chronic disease and use healthy, food-based interventions to help prevent, manage, and treat chronic diet-related diseases.