Food and Nutrition Systems: Food Contexts

Food contexts provide a way of thinking about the food and nutrition system that emphasizes the environments and settings within which the system operates. Contexts influence the inputs into the system and also receive the outputs that exit from the system, which often operate in the form of food cycles. The U.S. food and nutrition system has moved from operating primarily as local “foodsheds,” relying on seasonal foods to becoming highly globalized, the entire world providing a context that shapes American food, eating, and nutrition. For example, the international, national, and local policy environment offers laws and regulations that influence which foods are grown, how they are handled, where they are served, and how they are eaten. Similarly, the food system has waste material outputs at every stage that must be disposed of, recycled, or reused as agricultural refuse, food processing by-products, food products that cannot be distributed, kitchen scraps, and human waste. Two major types of context exist: sociocultural and biophysical.