Food and Public Health: A Practical Introduction

A new introduction to public health's most elemental topic

Food is baked in to most things that public health is and does. But for a field charged with carrying torches as divergent as anti-hunger and anti-obesity, it's unlikely, even impossible, to shape a unified approach to complex concepts like food environment, food access, or even nutrition.

Food and Public Health offers a contextualized, accessible introduction to understanding the foundations (and contradictions) at the intersection of these two topics. It distills the historical, political, sociological, and scientific factors influencing what we eat and where our food comes from, then offers actionable insights for future nutritionists, social workers, dietitians, and researchers in public health.

Guiding the reader through more than a century of food-focused regulation, policy, and education, Food and Public Health is an essential introduction to:

· food production and availability on a global and neighborhood scale
· dietary guidelines, agricultural subsidies, rationing, and other attempts by governments to shape their citizens' diets
· best practices in health promotion and chronic disease prevention
· food insecurity and its paradoxical role as driver of both hunger and obesity

Enriched with real-world examples and case studies, Food and Public Health offers a crucial link between kitchen tables and populations for the classroom.

Allison Karpyn, PhD, is Associate Professor of Education and Behavioral Health and Nutrition at the University of Delaware; she is also Associate Director of the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy at the University of Delaware and Associate Fellow for the Center for Public Health Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. Karpyn previously served as the Director of Research and Evaluation at The Food Trust, a pioneering nonprofit in Philadelphia. Her research focuses on understanding how to increase access to affordable nutritious foods, healthy food purchasing and consumption behavior, especially among children.