Cooking alternatives: Rethinking food education from the perspective of social space

Abstract

Abstract Since the 1980s, the Latin American population has experienced a change from its traditional diets based on natural foods to diets dominated by ultra-processed products with high energy content and low nutritional quality. This has generated serious health problems (malnutrition, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases), environmental, economic, cultural and social problems. Actions to address this problem have been mainly oriented to the area of food education from classic pedagogical approaches (diffusionist and nutritionist), which consider that the individual can freely choose what to eat if he or she has adequate food information, but do not include factors such as income, availability and prices of food products, as well as cultural preferences, which condition the choice of food. In other words, it does not take into account that the production and distribution of food are marked by power structures, and that recognizing this is essential to question and broaden the understanding of food practices. In this context, this article reviews various food education projects carried out with the Hispanic population to analyze their pedagogical foundations and identify whether they consider the influence that food production and distribution systems have on the eating habits of the population, specifically whether they take into account the relationship between people, social space, and their food choices. Based on the analysis of the reviewed cases, it is concluded that food education projects should not only be learning scenarios about nutrition, but also places to question and reinvent the decisions that are made daily in the act of eating, taking into account the relationship between eaters, food, and social space in the global food regime.