Poverty Food
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 2026
Paperback (Forthcoming)
(July 2027)
ISBN: 9781800509948
7.44 x 9.72 inches
Price: $55.00
People suffering chronic poverty must find food to eat. Poverty foods, cucina povera, have varied across time, place, and culture, ranging from the products of subsistence agriculture and foraging to mass-produced industrial foods. The recent rise of starvation as a weapon of war and oppression has lent increased urgency to the theme of Poverty Food, chosen as the topic for the 2026 Oxford Food Symposium and this volume in the series.
Several papers explore how humans find creative ways to feed themselves in the face of deprivation.– simple dishes, often plant-forward, offal-based, or featuring ingredients ignored by cuisines of affluence.
Others reveal how many dishes from cucina povera have been embraced by elites, driven by interest in eating nutritional ‘superfoods’, avoiding waste through ‘nose-to-tail’ eating, or gaining the supposed cachet of culinary cosmopolitanism and expose how this has often has disrupted traditional practices in those communities from which these new ingredients are sourced.
Papers also report on how finding food can also involve freeganism, gleaning, foraging, repurposing leftovers, and begging.
Other topics covered include seasonal scarcity – whether related to agricultural calendars, damaged food systems, or cultural or religious fasts and industrialized food systems, in which people without access to adequate markets, available time, and functioning kitchens become dependent on calorie-dense, nutrient-poor ultra-processed foods. The negative health effects of such foods – including the new combination of childhood obesity and malnutrition – fall heavily on those with fewer economic resources.
There are also papers examining past attempts by communities, states, or empires to meet people’s needs as well as the efficacy of recent organic and regenerative agricultural techniques intended to improve yields and replenish impoverished soils.
Other Titles in this Series
Authenticity in the Kitchen
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2005
Volume 2005
Cured, Fermented and Smoked Foods
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010
Volume 2010
