This week I was at one of my favorite conferences– the joint conference of the Association for the Study of Food and Society and the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society. Yes, that’s a mouthful. And it’s also a banquet of information from folks in lots of different disciplines, all united by a concern for how we can engage with our food systems in ways that support the people who grow, harvest, distribute, sell, buy and eat food. Oh, and how we can support our earth at the same time. So, not much– just that… 🙂

I learned so much about many different areas of agriculture, cooking, pedagogy and activism this week, it would take another week just to write it all down. And I will (well, at least some of it).

But for now, I have a treat for all of you.

At one of the sessions, we all got to hear about four new books that

…focus on the connections between food, health, and techno-science…  With science and technology playing highly prominent albeit contested roles in defining good food, healthy bodies and the future of planetary health, it is time to push the field in new directions… Collectively, [these books] show that notions of food, nutrition, hunger, and appetite are not apolitical but cultural technologies through which governments, institutions, and the public create knowledge, shape how we shall live, and bring worlds into being. (from the conference program)

And the treat is: All of these books are open-access, which means they’re all free! Well, except for one of them. But it’s great too, and all are worth checking out.

Here are the books, with the download links included and a little blurb from their press pages. Take a look and see if any of them catch your eye. I’m planning on reading all of them this summer, so will report on each in more detail.

Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge, by Charlotte Biltekoff.

In recent decades, many members of the public have come to see processed food as a problem that needs to be solved by eating “real” food and reforming the food system. But for many food industry professionals, the problem is not processed food or the food system itself, but misperceptions and irrational fears caused by the public’s lack of scientific understanding. In her highly original book, Charlotte Biltekoff explores the role that science and scientific authority play in food industry responses to consumer concerns about what we eat and how it is made. As Biltekoff documents, industry efforts to correct public misperceptions through science-based education have consistently misunderstood the public’s concerns, which she argues are an expression of politics. This has entrenched “food scientism” in public discourse and seeded a form of antipolitics, with broad consequences. Real Food, Real Facts offers lessons that extend well beyond food choice and will appeal to readers interested in how everyday people come to accept or reject scientific authority in matters of personal health and well-being.

On Hunger: Violence and Craving in America, from Starvation to Ozempic, by Dana Simmons

In this book, Dana Simmons explores the enduring production of hunger in US history. Hunger, in the modern United States, became a technology—a weapon, a scientific method, and a policy instrument. During the nineteenth century, state agents and private citizens colluded in large-scale campaigns of ethnic cleansing using hunger and food deprivation. In the twentieth century, officials enacted policies and rules that made incarcerated people, welfare recipients, and beneficiaries of foreign food aid hungry by design, in order to modify their behavior. With the advent of ultraprocessed foods, food manufacturers designed products to stimulate cravings and consumption at the expense of public health. Taking us inside the labs of researchers devoted to understanding hunger as a biological and social phenomenon, On Hunger examines the continuing struggle to produce, suppress, or control hunger in America.

Mal-nutrition: Maternal Health Science and the Reproduction of Harm, by Emily Yates-Doerr

Mal-Nutrition documents how maternal health interventions in Guatemala are complicit in reproducing poverty. Policy makers speak about how a critical window of biological growth around the time of pregnancy—called the “first 1,000 days of life”—determines health and wealth across the life course. They argue that fetal development is the key to global development. In this thought-provoking and timely book, Emily Yates-Doerr shows that the control of mothering is a paradigmatic technique of American violence that serves to control the reproduction of privilege and power. She illustrates the efforts of Guatemalan scientists, midwives, and mothers to counter the harms of such mal-nutrition. Their powerful stories offer a window into a form of nutrition science and policy that encourages collective nourishment and fosters reproductive cycles in which women, children, and their entire communities can flourish.

The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food, by Julie Guthman

This one’s not free, but it’s worth considering, and those of you who are academics might think about ordering a desk copy. Here’s what it’s about.

Why has Silicon Valley become the model for addressing today’s myriad social and ecological crises? With this book, Julie Guthman digs into the impoverished solutions for food and agriculture currently emerging from Silicon Valley, urging us to stop trying to fix our broken food system through finite capitalistic solutions and technological moonshots that do next to nothing to actualize a more just and sustainable system.

The Problem with Solutions combines an analysis of the rise of tech company solution culture with findings from actual research on the sector’s ill-informed attempts to address the problems of food and agriculture. As this seductive approach continues to infiltrate universities and academia, Guthman challenges us to reject apolitical and self-gratifying techno-solutions and develop the capacity and willingness to respond to the root causes of these crises. Solutions, she argues, are a product of our current condition, not an answer to it.

So, a few little somethings to add to your summer reading list. Let me know if any of these appeal to you, if you read it, and what you think.