Food Industry

Food’s complex roles in Latinas/os’ lives are such that we simultaneously need to explore the dynamics caused by the food industry as well as those created by people’s foodscapes. The social and health sciences have for a long time researched how the three pillars of the food industry, production, distribution, and consumption, impact the Latina/o “body.” What these studies often show is how the economics and politics governing the mechanism of the food industry negatively affects Latinas/os’ lives in terms of labor conditions and consumer habits. More recently, the humanities—particularly history, literary studies, philosophy—have placed the focus on people’s foodscapes. This refers to the places and spaces where people gather, prepare, share, speak about, and eat food. It includes stories of food’s significance at the personal, familial, cultural, and historical level. Foodscapes encapsulate how and why people create and perform food narratives that define and redefine their sense of identity. Studying food narratives of how Latinas/os gather and share information meaningful to them, shifts the focus from “bodies” that keep the food industry in operation to people who embody food’s material and symbolic realities.