Beyond the cover: Exploring Aotearoa’s troubled food system
Re-food: Exploring the Troubled Food System of Aotearoa New Zealand by Emily King. Photos / Supplied
In Re-food, Emily King explores Aotearoa’s troubled food system and looks at the best way to address the challenges we face with soils, waterways, climate change, food waste, packaging, unhealthy diets and a lack of access to food.
Here are five key takeaways from her book.
1. Looking at the big picture will get results
Re-food is about how to get our collective heads around the whole food system so we can make changes that lead to improved health for our people and the environment.
It looks at how we grow, make, and eat food, then asks the reader to take that as an approach and make changes. It demonstrates how the system is interconnected and why everyone should think about that when making food decisions.
For example, when you’re shopping, you could consider the farmer or grower who made your food and how they grew it, or the packaging, as well as the price and benefits to your health. If we all start to view the system this way, we will begin to see improvements.
At a bigger systemic level, I’d like to think we can take a fresh approach to solving some of our greatest challenges, including the health outcomes of poor diets, lack of access to food, and land-use challenges such as soils and climate change.
These are defining issues of our time and we don’t have robust frameworks to solve them and their interconnections.
2. Include all elements: Grow, Make, Nourish
To take the above approach, we must delve into how food is grown and made, and whether people are getting access to it.