Author: Jennifer Sumner
University of Toronto, Canada

Edition: Volume 64, Number 3, Special Edition, November 2024

Introduction: As a derivative of the core concept of literacy, food literacy can similarly either empower or disempower people. For example, the meaning of food literacy can be narrowed down to knowing how to grocery shop and prepare a meal, resulting in obedient neoliberal consumers who never challenge the food system. However, given the problems associated with our current food system, adults need a broader, more critical understanding of food literacy to address issues such as human health and planetary sustainability. Using a Freirean analysis, this article explores how a new trend at the forefront of literacies in adult education – critical food literacy – can empower adults to ‘read the world’ through food in order to navigate, question and change the food system. It examines power in the food system, discusses both food literacy and critical food literacy, and illustrates how adults learn the set of skills, knowledge and understandings that can challenge power in the food system and open the door to more equitable and sustainable ways of producing and consuming food.

Keywords: critical food literacy, food literacy food system, Paulo Freire, power

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 64:3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.