This article uses data from the 1993 Health and Lifestyles Survey of England to present findings on how, why and when people use cooking skills; where and from whom people learn these skills. The implications for policy are explored. The survey data suggests that socioeconomic status and education are associated with the sources of people's knowledge about cooking. The first or prime source of learning about cooking skills was reported to be mothers; cooking classes in school were cited as the next most important by the majority of correspondents, with some class and educational variations. The importance of mothers as sources of information on cooking skills is observed in all social classes. What emerges is a population unsure of specific cooking techniques and lacking in confidence to apply techniques and cook certain foods. Women still bear the burden of cooking for the household, with four out of every five women respondents cooking on most or every day, compared with one in five men. This may be related to the large number of men who claim to have no cooking skills (one in five).

This paper summarizes the main findings of the GLAMUR project which starts with an apparently simple question: is "local" more sustainable than "global"? Sustainability assessment is framed within a post-normal science perspective, advocating the integration of public deliberation and scientific research. The assessment spans 39 local, intermediate and global supply chain case studies across different commodities and countries. Assessment criteria cover environmental, economic, social, health and ethical sustainability dimensions. A closer view of the food system demonstrates a highly dynamic local-global continuum where actors, while adapting to a changing environment, establish multiple relations and animate several chain configurations. The evidence suggests caution when comparing "local" and "global" chains, especially when using the outcomes of the comparison in decision-making. Supply chains are analytical constructs that necessarily-and arbitrarily-are confined by system boundaries, isolating a set of elements from an interconnected whole. Even consolidated approaches, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), assess only a part of sustainability attributes, and the interpretation may be controversial. Many sustainability attributes are not yet measurable and "hard" methodologies need to be complemented by "soft" methodologies which are at least able to identify critical issues and trade-offs. Aware of these limitations, our research shows that comparing local and global chains, with the necessary caution, can help overcome a priori positions that so far have characterized the debate between "localists" and "globalists". At firm level, comparison between "local" and "global" chains could be useful to identify best practices, benchmarks, critical points, and errors to avoid. As sustainability is not a status to achieve, but a never-ending process, comparison and deliberation can be the basis of a "reflexive governance" of food chains.

The 2005–8 food crisis was a shock to political elites, but in some respects the situation was normal. Food policies are failing to respond adequately to the squeeze on land, people, health and environment. Strong evidence of systems failure and stress, termed here New Fundamentals, ought to reframe twenty‐first century food politics and effort. Yet so far, international discourse is too often narrow and technical. The paper suggests that 2005–8 reinforced how the dominant twentieth century productionist policy paradigm is running out of steam. This assumed that producing more food would resolve social problems. Yet distortions in markets, access and culture remain. At national and international levels of governance, despite realization of the enormity of the challenge ahead, there is still a belief in slow incremental change.

Objective: To explore the terms on which nutrition should engage with the global challenges ahead. Design: Analysis of current orientation of nutrition and policy. Result: Nutrition faces four conceptual problems. The first is that nutrition has fissured into two broad but divergent directions. One is biologically reductionist, now to the genome; the other sees nutrition as located in social processes, now also requiring an understanding of the physical environment. As a result, nutrition means different things to different people. The second problem is a misunderstanding of the relationship between evidence, policy and practice, assuming that policy is informed by evidence, when there is much evidence to the contrary. The third problem is that nutrition is generally blind to the environment despite the geo-spatial crisis over food supply, which will determine who eats what, when and how. How can we ask people to eat fish when fish stocks are collapsing, or to eat wisely if water shortage dominates or climate change weakens food security? The fourth problem is that, in today's consumerist and supermarketised world, excess choice plus information overload may be nutrition's problem, not solution. Conclusion: Nutrition science needs to re-engage with society and the environment. The alternative is, at best, to produce an individualised approach to public health or, at worst, to produce brilliant science but be policy-irrelevant.

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This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link AbstractTo address the policy malfunctions of the recent past and present, UK food policy needs to link policy areas that in the past have been dealt with in a disparate manner, and to draw on a new ecological public health approach. This will need a shift within the dominant trade liberalisation-national economic competitiveness paradigm that currently informs UK food policy, and the international levels of the EU and the WTO trade rules, and grants the large corporate players in the food system a favoured place at the policy-making tables. The contradictions of the food system have wrought crises that have engendered widespread institutional change at all levels of governance. Recent institutional reforms to UK food policy, such as the FSA and DEFRA, reflect a bounded approach to policy integration. Initiatives seeking a more integrated approach to food policy problems, such as the Social Exclusion Unit's access to shops report, and the Policy Commission on the Future of Food and Farming, can end up confined to a particular policy sector framed by particular interests -a process of "policy confinement". However, the UK can learn from the experience of Norway and Finland who have found their own routes to a more joinedup approach to public health and a sustainable food supply by, for example, introducing a national food policy council to provide integrated policy advice. Also, at the local and community levels in the UK policy alternatives are being advanced in an ad hoc fashion by local food initiatives. More structural level interventions at the regional and local governance levels are also needed to address the social dimensions of a sustainable food supply.

Food supply chains of developed countries industrialised in the second half of the twentieth century, with significant implications for developing countries over policy priorities, the ensuing external costs and the accompanying concentration of market power. Very powerful corporations dominate many sectors. Primary producers are locked into tight specifications and contracts. Consumers may benefit from cheaper food but there are quality implications and health externalities. As consumer confidence has been shaken, new quality agencies have been created. Tensions have emerged about the state's role as facilitator of industrial efficiencies. Food policy is thus torn between the pursuit of productivity and reduced prices and the demand for higher quality, with implications for both producers and consumers in the developing world.

This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link 2 ABSTRACTThis article examines the issues of access to food and the influences people face when shopping for a healthy food basket. It uses data from the Health Education Authority's 1993Health and Lifestyle Survey to examine the barriers people face in accessing a healthy diet.The main findings are that access to food is primarily determined by income, and this is in turn closely related to physical resources available to access healthy food. There is an associated class bias over access to sources of healthy food. The poor have less access to a car, find it harder to get to out of town shopping centres and thus less able to carry and transport food in bulk. The majority of people shop in supermarkets as they report that local shops do not provide the services people demand and that food choice and quality are limited.In tackling food poverty and promoting healthy eating health promotion practice needs to address these structural issues as opposed to relying on psycho-social models of education based on the provision of information and choice.