Transforming School Food Politics Around the World

How to successfully challenge and transform public school-food programs to emphasize care, justice, and sustainability, with insights from eight countries across the Global North and South.

School food programs are about more than just feeding kids. They are a form of community care and a policy tool for advancing education, health, justice, food sovereignty, and sustainability. Transforming School Food Politics around the World illustrates how everyday people from a diverse range of global contexts have successfully challenged and changed programs that fall short of these ideals. Editors Jennifer Gaddis and Sarah A. Robert highlight the importance of global and local struggles to argue that the transformative potential of school food hinges on valuing the gendered labor that goes into caring for, feeding, and educating children.

Through accessible and inspiring essays, Transforming School Food Politics around the World shows politics in action. Chapter contributors include youths, mothers, teachers, farmers, school nutrition workers, academics, lobbyists, policymakers, state employees, nonprofit staff, and social movement activists. Drawing from historical and contemporary research, personal experiences, and collaborations with community partners, they provide readers with innovative strategies that can be used in their own efforts to change school food policy and systems. Ultimately, this volume sets the stage to reimagine school food as part of the infrastructure of daily life, arguing that it can and should be at the vanguard of building a new economy rooted in care for people and the environment.

Jennifer E. Gaddis is Associate Professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of The Labor of Lunch. She is an advisory board member of the National Farm to School Network.

Sarah A. Robert is Associate Professor at the University at Buffalo’s Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Neoliberal Education Reform; Neoliberalism, Gender, and Education Work;and School Food Politics. She is an Associate Editor for Gender, Work, and Organizations.