Just Food: Because It Is Never Just Food

David Beriss

Today was day one of this year’s best little food conference. Organized by the Association for the Study of Food and Society, the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society, the Canadian Association for Food Studies, and, of course, SAFN, this is the most interesting interdisciplinary food studies conference in North America. If you are interested in food and nutrition, you should be here. Of course, this year, “here” is really wherever you are. The conference is entirely virtual this year, with ingenious software allowing the whole thing to work (relatively) seamlessly. And if you are a SAFN member (or a member of any of the other associations), you get a special discounted registration rate.

Should you join the conference? Yes, you probably should. Or tell someone about it. Meanwhile, please keep in mind that the deadline for two of the SAFN student writing awards is rapidly approaching. That is June 15, for both the Christine Wilson Award (for outstanding undergraduate and graduate student research papers that examine topics within the perspectives in nutrition, food studies and anthropology) and for the Thomas Marchione Food-as-a-Human-Right Student Award (for work on food justice, food security and access, and most directly, food as a human right). Follow the links for detail, but remember, you cannot win either award if you do not submit work!

Meanwhile, you can get a sense of what is happening at the conference by looking at the program, here. You may have missed day one, but there are still several more days and a lot of interesting panels to attend. You can also follow some of what is going on through twitter. Panels are being “live tweeted” and you can find the tweets by looking for #justfood21. Personally, I am looking forward to the panels on “The (De)Coloniality of Food: Global Cases of Power and Resistance” and the two panels on “Chefs, Restaurants, and Culinary Sustainability” (full disclosure, I am on one of those panels) tomorrow. But there is so much more…and several more days.

See you there!