NRC 2018 Forum - UNPACKING FOOD LITERACY

Unpacking innovative strategies to shift attitudes, social norms and the food environment
Food literacy is so much more than just food skills and cooking. Learn how different population-based strategies can help shift attitudes and social norms about food and healthy eating.

Concerns about unhealthy eating habits, have resulted in the framing of food literacy initiatives, aimed at reducing the burden of obesity and chronic disease. We make the argument for reframing food literacy to explicitly include the context of, not only our current food environment, but also of the weight-centred discourse and fat-phobic culture that influence food, nutrition and health messaging. Food literacy should be framed as a strategy to improve self-efficacy and confidence, to nurture our natural abilities with feeding and eating, and support mental health promotion through responsive feeding, age-appropriate developmental principles, and body positivity; not to address obesity.