For the last 30 years, the population of Mexico has grappled with overweight, obesity, and associated chronic diseases, such as type-2 diabetes and hypertension. To standardize care among healthcare providers and dietitians, an official nutritional guideline was published in the early 2000s, which included a non-modifiable food-based dietary guideline in...
The act of accessing food is embedded within various systems of power. This dissertation problematizes our understanding of food access for vulnerable populations by making explicit ways that social constructions, including power, affect food access for vulnerable populations. This is accomplished across three manuscripts. The first manuscript presents textual analysis...
The mangrove ecosystem has served as a life-support system to large populations of coastal dwellers in Ecuador for many generations. Diverse communities comprised of multi-racial and multi-ethnic groups have formed along the edge of the mangrove forests throughout the Ecuadorian coast. These groups self-identify as being part of an “ancestral”...
The nutrition transition is a global phenomenon in which populations move from low socioeconomic status (SES) to high SES and from high physical activity to low physical activity. Rising rates of urbanization and non-communicable diseases in West Africa may indicate an advanced phase of the nutrition transition; however, through a...
How do fishing guides of the Cascade and Coast Range rivers negotiate the conflicting tensions between their client’s desire to experience the wild and the extractive nature based tourism of their role as fishing guides? How do they position their services relative to the environment and an imagined landscape that...
The products, processes, and tools of school feeding programs have been examined from multiple perspectives and disciplines in an attempt to improve child nutrition outcomes, to support local and national agriculture, and increase sustainability practices. There is little qualitative research on the role, needs, and experiences of school food service...
An overarching explanation for environmental degradation has been humans' disconnection from the natural world. Utilizing Whiteheadian theory, I offer that there is no disconnection. Rather, I propose that there is a dearth of relational acknowledgement. I suggest that the Cartesian dualism and modern science led to an illusory belief that...
This research analyzes the relations of ethnic refugee communities and particularly their
businesses to gentrification and community vitality in a neighborhood in Portland,
Oregon. The data indicates that gentrification is not a linear process of displacement of
African Americans by Whites seeking affordable housing and new frontiers, but rather is...
Limited research has analyzed how the values espoused by Western alternative food systems, such as taste and territoriality, are adopted and refashioned in post-socialist societies. Muscovites now echo the global quality turn that reconnects consumers to their food sources. This research qualitatively explores the perspectives of the cosmopolitan consumers of...
As Turkey's cultural and economic climate has experienced dramatic shifts in accordance with its changing role in global society, a neo-Ottoman movement has taken root in recent years which can offer insight into the new Turkish identity. This sociopolitical movement captures a diverse set of cultural attributes through a contemporary...