Everybody eats. We may also consider ourselves specialists on this issue, or at least Instagram specialists. But are we conscious that the shrimp inside our freezer could be farmed and iced in Vietnam, the grapes in our fruit bowl delivered from Chile, as well as the coffee in our coffee maker produced in Nicaragua, roasted in Germany, and distributed in Canada? Whether we know it or not really, every time we shop for food, cook, and consume, we connect ourselves to complicated supply networks, organizations, and companies that enable about Food our meals choices. Actually locavores might not know the complete story from the produce they buy in the farmers market. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, meals article writer and scholar Fabio Parasecoli gives a consumer’s guideline to the meals system, from regional to global.

Parasecoli describes a system composed of open-ended, shifting, and unstable systems rather than well-defined stores; considers healthy food and the contradictory information about it customers receive; discusses food waste and the implications for sustainability; explores meals systems (and ‘culinary luddism’); and examines hunger and food insecurity in both developing and created countries. Parasecoli reminds us that we are not just customers but also residents, and as residents we have even more power to enhance the food program than we perform by our specific food choices.