Food literacy

Food literacy is an understanding of the impact of one’s food choices on one’s health, as well as the economy and the environment. This means understanding food production, ingredients, product claims, and more, such as the social cost of food production. It can also mean being able to make healthy food choices in a variety of situations.

Overview

Food production and acquisition involve many elements and concerns. People are aware of this background information to varying degrees. Sometimes, food literacy is practical, such as when an individual weighs nutritional components, including calories, fats, sugars, and overall dietary balance, in a serving of food. Other times, food literacy may be political, such as when considering the human rights record of the nation where food originates.

Food literacy often involves educating children about the origins of food. For example, many young children think that food comes from a store or a fast-food restaurant. As they get older, they may understand that vegetables come from farms and apples grow in orchards. They may not comprehend the vast amount of work involved in growing food, harvesting it, and transporting it to stores, where their families purchase it. A focus of food literacy education is to give people an understanding of what producing food entails and the many individuals who are involved, including migrant workers, truck drivers, cooks, veterinarians, food scientists, and shelf-stockers. Each stage of the process involves costs and benefits. For example, food production requires the use of fuel and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Crops grown near where they are sold and consumed require less fuel for transportation than those shipped hundreds or thousands of miles. From a social justice perspective, food literacy involves an awareness of the living conditions of migrant workers, the welfare of child laborers, and the use of forced labor to produce some crops in many countries. Enslaved people are exploited to harvest cocoa, strawberries, and citrus; fish and shellfish; rice; and palm oil. Cattle farms and poultry farms have also been found to use the labor of enslaved people. Consumers may struggle with issues of accountability and traceability when it comes to many food products because components of a food—sugar, cocoa, nuts, milk, etc.—may be sourced from multiple continents. Manufacturers may verify conditions at these sources or rely on the self-reporting of producers.

An environmental concern of food literacy is the toll of global climate change, which creates more extreme weather conditions to which food producers must adapt. This might include replanting after flooding washes away a field or increasing water usage during dry weather. Farmers might also have to change the crops they plant if growing conditions become significantly different and no longer support the crops they once produced. Other environmental concerns include soil depletion, fertilizer and pesticide runoff that can pollute waterways, and the health of bees, which are important pollinators.

Beyond what is regarded as family farming, however, food literacy education can be difficult. Many products, such as meat, poultry, and eggs, come from industrial farming operations. Large-scale industrial agriculture is the largest producer of food in the United States. Some of these facilities have been criticized for their unhealthy and overcrowded conditions. Others have been accused of polluting nearby waterways with animal waste. Food literacy advocates maintain that all consumers should be aware of such concerns.

Bibliography

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Van der Zee, Bibi. “Why Factory Farming Is Not Just Cruel—but Also a Threat to All Life on the Planet.” The Guardian, 4 Oct. 2017, www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/04/factory-farming-destructive-wasteful-cruel-says-philip-lymbery-farmageddon-author. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.

“What is Food Literacy?” Food Literacy Center, www.foodliteracycenter.org/what-food-literacy. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.