Food Justice in Higher Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: New Directions in EcoPedagogy

Abstract

Food is an incredibly important yet highly under-theorized and under-researched part of higher education discourse. This project analyzes the ways in which students make decisions about which food they consume on campus. Through preliminary participant observations and interviews, this project finds that time, convenience, price, quality, and personal conviction are major overlapping pressures that, coupled with the lack of healthy and sustainable alternatives, drive most students to make poor food decisions. Because of the deeply embedded role that food has in our lives, the politics surrounding food have critical social and environmental implications. The ultimate goal of this project is to understand how structures of higher education are intimately connected with local and global food systems.

Author

• Anthony Tróchez, University of California - Los Angeles