Introduction to Globalization, Food Sovereignty, and Human Rights Food. You can tell stories about food. You can write and teach about food. You can learn about food. But what is food? It is a source of life, a source of sustainability, and a source of understanding history. It is also a source of understanding different cultures and religions and the source of their existence. In many instances food is about cooking as well. Although we have a long history of food eaten raw, in our current culture, food is most often cooked, and unfortunately, frequently microwaved. This has resulted in many ways in the rise of fast food, and large food corporations have emerged. While difficult to measure, in the United States, estimates say that between 20 and 40 percent of food that we put on our plates each year is thrown away.1 Personally, I go to the grocery store almost every day. Invariably, I end up buying more food than I need, and I end up not being able to eat it all before some of it goes bad. Hence, I am guilty of what 20–40 percent of the population is guilty of as well. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is good that we shop, we converse with people at the store, and we take time to learn about the food we are buying. It builds relationships. On the other hand, we consume too much. If we learned about where our food came from, we might begin to think about how much we overconsume, and we begin to learn about the communities that produce our food and how much they struggle to produce the food that
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