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"How people eat today is a record of food use through the ages, and Famine Foods offers the first ever overview of the use of alternative foods during food shortages. Paul E. Minnis explores the unusual plants that have helped humanity survive throughout history. "--

As a vegetarian for several decades, Sue Hendler had a criterion for what could and could not be consumed: "Never eat anything that has a face." Indeed, she once chided me, on those grounds, for eating shrimps. Her criterion exemplifies two important aspects of ethical decision-making. First, what ought to be done or not done depends upon what entities one is dealing with and deciding about. In other words, good ethics depends upon sound metaphysics; moral decision-making is, in part, a function of one's ontology. Second, what something is (its ontology) to us as human beings—for example, a "being with a face"—partly depends upon how we relate to it, because how we relate to something makes some of its characteristics more salient than others, and even (in some cases) creates those characteristics. In other words, ontological identity is, in part, relational, and relating and relationships are core contributors to good ethical reasoning. This paper explores and elaborates upon these two fundamental claims, and shows how Sue Hendler supported these ideas in her life and in her work as a feminist planner.

Listeria monocytogenes is a food-borne pathogen responsible for listeriosis, a sickness with a high mortality rate. Listeriosis is largely associated with ready-to-eat (RTE) foods. It is well established that foods that pose the greatest risk of foodborne listeriosis are those RTE foods that have intrinsic characteristics such as pH and water activity that support the growth of L. monocytogenes. RTE foods can also become re-contaminated during further processing and handling. Increased handling leads to a higher probability of contamination. Sources of contamination can be food contact surfaces, processing machinery and workers. In our research, L. monocytogenes was detected in a RTE salad. Food safety criteria for Listeria monocytogenes in RTE foods have been applied from 2006 (Commission Regulation (EC) 2073/2005). Still, human invasive listeriosis was reported to increase during 2009-2013 in the European Union and European Economic Area. Time series analysis for the 2008-2015 period in this area showed an increasing trend of the monthly notified incidence rate of confirmed human invasive listeriosis of the over 75 age groups and female age group between 25 and 44 years old (probably related to pregnancies).

The food justice movement has taken off in recent years. Despite its call for justice in the food system, it has been critiqued as being inaccessible to people who need food the most. The food system marginalizes women, minorities, and low-income people, making these groups the most at risk for food insecurity. Solutions to food insecurity come from both government and non-governmental avenues. This thesis calls for a merger of solutions to food insecurity and food justice in food security justice, and assesses the ability of solutions to food insecurity to confront issues of injustice. Community-based solutions currently have the potential to address issues of justice, as well as providing added benefits of promoting community cohesion and creating new economic spaces. Through a simulation of the SNAP budget and an exploration of the narrative between gang violence and food insecurity in Los Angeles, the necessity for solutions to food insecurity to address justice is established.

Everybody Eats tells the story of food justice in Greensboro, North Carolina--a midsize city in the southern United States. The city's residents found themselves in the middle of conversations about food insecurity and justice when they reached the top of the Food Research and Action Center's list of major cities experiencing food hardship. Greensboro's local food communities chose to confront these high rates of food insecurity by engaging neighborhood voices, mobilizing creative resources at the community level, and sustaining conversations across the local food system. Within three years of reaching the peak of FRAC's list, Greensboro saw an 8 percent drop in its food hardship rate and moved from first to fourteenth in FRAC's list. Using eight case studies of food justice activism, from urban farms to mobile farmers markets, shared kitchens to food policy councils, Everybody Eats highlights the importance of communication--and communicating social justice specifically--in building the kinds of infrastructure needed to create secure and just food systems.

"Food is critical to military performance, but it's also central to social interaction and fundamental to our sense of identity. The soldiers of the Great War didn't shed their eating preferences with their civilian clothes and the army rations, heavily reliant on bully beef and hardtack biscuit, were frequently found wanting. Nutritional science of the day had only a limited understanding of the role of vitamins and minerals, and the men were often presented with a diet that, shortages and logistics permitting, was high in calories but low in flavour and variety. Just as now, soldiers on active service were linked with home through the lovingly packed food parcels they received; a taste of home in the trenches. This book uses the personal accounts of the men themselves to explore a subject that was central not only to their physical health, but also to their emotional survival."--Publisher's website