Opportunities and challenges for school food programs in Canada: Lessons from the United States

2025-03-19 22:12:53 | Article | Contributor(s): Amberley T. Ruetz, Janet Poppendieck | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.665

As Canada works towards developing a national school food program, it is timely to examine the lessons learned from the programs of other countries. Analyzing these insights can help Canada avoid key pitfalls and replicate promising practices in program design and implementation. The...

Food insecurity in books for children: A qualitative content analysis

2025-03-19 22:12:53 | Article | Contributor(s): Dian Day | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.654

Issues of class and poverty are largely absent from children’s fiction and from elementary school curricula, even though, in Canada, one in every five children live in food insecure households. This paper examines the limited number of middle grade children’s books that feature depictions of...

Envisioning a community food hub to support food security: A community engagement process at a post-secondary institute

2025-03-19 22:12:53 | Article | Contributor(s): Sarah Clement, Sara Kozicky, Cassandra Hamilton, Rachel Murphy | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.645

Objective: The objective of this community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) project was to gain an in-depth understanding of the needs, interest and opportunities that exist within a post-secondary institution with respect to supporting food security among students via a food hub....

Is cell-based meat a climate solution for Canada? : Interpreting lifecycle footprints within the domestic agri-food context

2025-03-19 22:12:52 | Essay | Contributor(s): Ryan M Katz-Rosene | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.629

Interest and technological know-how in cell-based meat production has grown tremendously in recent years. The appeal is wide ranging, but two main drivers include: i) the possibility of producing edible meat without requiring the slaughter of sentient animals; and ii) the potential to...

Industrial meat in Canada, growth promoters and the struggle over international food standards

2025-03-19 22:12:52 | Essay | Contributor(s): Elizabeth Ann Smythe | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.632

This article focuses on differing national regulations and standards regarding how meat for human consumption is produced and what is permissible in that production process. Attempts to harmonize these regulations at the global level to facilitate international trade have proven to be...

Beef, Beans, or Byproducts? Following Flexitarianism’s Finances

2025-03-19 22:12:52 | Essay | Contributor(s): Kelsey Speakman | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.638

Flexitarianism was one of the top food trends of the summer in 2020. Characterizing reductions in meat eating as representative of the reflections on personal and societal health that were taking place at the time, Canada’s largest food retailer, Loblaw situated the company’s expanded...

Comment promouvoir la consommation de protéines végétales : Une revue de la littérature de presse

2025-03-19 22:12:52 | Essay | Contributor(s): Coralie Gaudreau, Laurence Guillaumie, Emmanuelle Simon, Lydi-Anne Vézina-Im, Olivier Boiral | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.613

The consumption of plant proteins has several benefits in terms of health, the environment and the development of the agri-food sector. Despite the advantages linked to the consumption of plant proteins, the consumption of meat often remains favored. This article presents a literature review...

Protein politics: Sustainable protein and the logic of energy

2025-03-19 22:12:52 | Essay | Contributor(s): Maro Adjemian, Heidi Janes, Sarah J. Martin, Charles Mather, Madelyn J. White | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.628

Powerful actors associated with intensive livestock production are repositioning industrially produced meat and farmed fish as “sustainable protein.” This repositioning, we show, involves justifying the production of meat through a range of metrics, calculations, and valuations. These metrics...

Producing protein: Fractionation of animal bodies, mass consumption of cheap protein, and the value of protein sourced from industrial hog operations

2025-03-19 22:12:51 | Essay | Contributor(s): Katie MacDonald | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.635

This article claims that the pursuit of protein specifically, not meat in general, is woven into the very fabric of industrial hog farming and the devalued animals at its centre. Further, this piece forces a critical lens and reclassification of the value of protein sourced from confined...

Meat politics at the dinner table: Understanding differences and similarities in Canadians’ meat-related attitudes, preferences and practices

2025-03-19 22:12:51 | Essay | Contributor(s): Emily Kennedy, Shyon Baumann, Josée Johnston | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.529

Few food groups are subject to the same depth and scope of critique as meat. Yet little is known about how the Canadian public feels about meat production and consumption. In other jurisdictions, meat has been a politically polarizing topic; thus, we focus our analysis on political differences...

Introducing meat studies

2025-03-19 22:12:51 | Essay | Contributor(s): Ryan J. Phillips, Elisabeth Abergel | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i1.691

A growing, though still loosely connected, body of academic work has started placing meat at the centre of critical discourses regarding climate change and environmental sustainability, human health, economic wellbeing, food futures, and animal and ecological ethics. This special themed issue...

The CFS Choux Questionnaire

2025-03-19 22:12:51 | Interview | Contributor(s): Greg de St. Maurice | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.701

A riff on the well-riffed Proust Questionnaire, the CFS Choux Questionnaire is meant to elicit a tasty and perhaps surprising experience, framed within a seemingly humble exterior. (And yes, some questions have a bit more craquelin than others.) Straightforward on their own, the queries...

Review of Growing and Eating Sustainably: Agroecology in Action

2025-03-19 22:12:51 | Review | Contributor(s): Richard S. Bloomfield | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.692

Dana James and Evan Bowness’ book, Growing and eating sustainably: Agroecology in action, provides a portrayal of existing sites of a radically different food system than our present industrial one. The authors explore the origin of agroecology as a social movement, before expanding on the...

Balancing acts: : Unpacking mothers’ experiences and meanings of school lunch packing

2025-03-19 22:12:51 | Article | Contributor(s): Seri Niimi-Burch, Jennifer Black | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.651

While Canadian policy makers are considering expanding school food programs in Canada, parents remain primarily responsible for packing lunches. Although women perform disproportionate amounts of foodwork, including feeding their children on school days, little research has investigated...

A review of food asset maps in Canada

2025-03-19 22:12:51 | Article | Contributor(s): Belinda Li, Tammara Soma, Raghava Payment, Srishti Kumar, Nicole Anderson, Flora Xu, Phonpoom Piensatienkul | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.655

Food asset mapping is gaining prominence in Canada as an important planning tool for the evaluation of local food systems. In addition to being used by planners to identify opportunities for improved food security, food asset maps are also valuable references for sourcing food locally,...

Negotiating farm femininity in agricultural leadership

2025-03-19 22:12:50 | Article | Contributor(s): Jennifer Braun, Ken Caine, Mary Anne Beckie | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.646

A growing number of women in the Canadian Prairie region are advancing into leadership roles in agriculture, which remains a predominantly male domain. In this research we explore how professionally and managerially employed women in agriculture in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and...

From greedy grocers to carbon taxes and everything in between: What do we think we know about food prices in Canada and how strong is the evidence?

2025-03-19 22:12:50 | Review | Contributor(s): Brian Pentz, Taylor Ehrlick, Ryan Katz-Rosene, Philip A Loring | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.690

In Canada, the task of explaining food prices falls to a handful of grey literature reports that shape media coverage and public understanding and carry significant political and policy influence. We performed an in-depth analysis of fifty-one of these influential reports, including...

Sovereignty of and through food: A decolonial feminist political ecology of Indigenous food sovereignty in Treaty 9

2025-03-19 22:12:50 | Article | Contributor(s): Keira A. Loukes | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.660

“Food sovereignty,” a term conceived by peasant agriculturalists in South America, has become ubiquitous worldwide in academic and activist circles advocating for greater local control over local food. Its use has been adopted by various actors in North America, most notably by...

Can historians order off the menu?: A method for historical menu analysis

2025-03-19 22:12:50 | Article | Contributor(s): Koby Song-Nichols | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.682

While historians have used menus to tell part of the histories of restaurants, little guidance has been provided on how we should approach these unique culinary documents. This lack of instruction becomes more apparent in light of the impressive amount of archival work and digitization of...

Reflecting on a decade of Canadian food studies

2025-03-19 22:12:49 | Essay | Contributor(s): Rachel Engler-Stringer, Laurence Godin, Charles Z. Levkoe, Alexia Moyer, David Szanto | https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v11i2.702

In this editorial, the Management Team of Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l’alimentation (CFS/RCÉA) looks back across the history of the journal and towards its future. They collectively reflect on the journal’s ethos, its range of publications, and what the future...