FOOD SYSTEMS - ISSUE BRIEF - DETERMINING HEALTH

Food food systems threaten our health and well- systems consist of several major components: being when workers are treated poorly, food is the food supply chain, people and institutions, produced in unsustainable ways and unhealthy and food system drivers and outcomes. [...] 4 1.0 WHAT IS A FOOD SYSTEM? Food systems are the webs of activities, people, institutions and processes that bring food from the fields, forests and waters to our plates, and beyond.2 This document uses both the terms food system and food systems. [...] In Canada, household-level food insecurity is described as inadequate or insecure access to food due to a lack of financial resources.18 Food justice Food justice represents efforts to ensure that the benefits and risks of food system activities are distributed and shared fairly, and to restructure dominant food systems with a core focus on equity and linkages to other social justice activities.19. [...] the “cultural practices of Indigenous food Structural and social determinants of health, systems and the land.”88(p2) such as income and living and working conditions, interact with oppressive systems In Canada, policies and practices that have (e.g., racism and colonialism) to make certain deepened the industrial food system have groups and communities more vulnerable to simultaneously threatened. [...] Industrial food policies and practices restore and uphold control over their own food are rooted in settler colonialism, and have systems.87,90,103 changed how food is preserved, prepared DETERMINING HEALTH: FOOD SYSTEMS ISSUE BRIEF 19 4 Food policies shaping Food policies determine whether food food environments environments promote health and justice and for whom.