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I always love hearing food stories—I’m a food systems nerd, after all!—but I especially love it when farmers, fishers, and other folks on the front lines of our food system have platforms to share their own stories themselves.
A highlight of Food Tank’s recent Summits has been “Voices of Farmers,” where we’ve handed over the stage to farmers for an evening of authentic storytelling. In a couple weeks, we’ll be hosting these storytelling events in Dublin, Ireland (more info HERE), and in Adelaide, Australia (more info HERE), too.
Storytelling is at the heart of food sovereignty! This is why I’m inspired by the books on Food Tank’s winter reading list.
In the powerful book Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison, we read firsthand accounts of nutrient-poor meals, privatized food contracts, and systemic neglect in the carceral system—and explore emerging efforts to bring accountability and care back into prison food systems.
Samin Nosrat, in Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love, brings us a joyful guide to using our ordinary ingredients to connect with others. And in her bestselling memoir Accidentally on Purpose, Top Chef winner and host Kristen Kish tells stories of her childhood as an adoptee, her career in the kitchen, and navigating missteps on the way to finding her voice.
Several titles on this list tell stories of specific ingredients and crops themselves, too, from breadfruit trees across continents as an embodiment of resilience to the ways macaroni and cheese intersects with social movements from 1700s English sophisticates to the American Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century.
Here are the books we’re reading this winter, in alphabetical order:
Accidentally on Purpose by Kristen Kish
Al Dente: A History of Food in Italy by Fabio Parasecoli
Breadfruit: Three Global Journeys of a Bountiful Tree by Russell Fielding
Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly by Hannah Selinger
Dark Laboratory: How Colonialism Shaped the Climate Crisis by Tao Leigh Goffe
Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison by Leslie Soble with Alex Busansky and Aishatu R. Yusuf, based on research by Impact Justice
Food Fight: Misguided Policies, Supply Challenges, and the Impending Struggle to Feed a Hungry World by Richard Sexton
Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us by Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall, PhD
Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement by Hanna Garth
Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand by Jeff Chu
Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love: A Cookbook by Samin Nosrat
Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food by Bruce Friedrich
Native Food Plants of Texas: an Austin Forager’s Guide Based on Indigenous Knowledge by Cyrus Harp
Reclaiming the Black Body: Nourishing the Home Within by Alishia McCullough
Revolutionary Science: The Struggle for Agroecology in the Americas by Bruce Jennings (forthcoming March 2026)
The Almond Paradox: Cracking Open the Politics of What Plants Need by Emily Reisman
The Bottomless Cup by Kevin Boehm
The Chesapeake Table: Your Guide to Eating Local by Renee Brooks Catacalos
The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese: From Ancient Rome to Modern America by Karima Moyer-Nocchi
Will This Make You Happy by Tanya Bush
You can check out more details about all these books by CLICKING HERE.
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Photo courtesy of Alireza Attari, Unsplash
