Worry-nostalgia is a particular iteration of felt anxiety that certain material things and ways of being in the world are slipping away. We suggest that this particular shade of place-based nostalgia, expressed through stress, anxiety, and worry, comes from broader concerns about individual and community health, weight, and well-being, as well as from longing for the relations that made certain foods seem naturally embedded in a particular community and rooted in a specific landscape. We consider and compare three very different ethnographic contexts—suburban parts of Osaka, Japan; peri-urban Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States; and the peri-urban areas around the capital city of Apia, Samoa—to explore the intersection of memory and distress around what people eat and what they think they should eat, in the context of local cuisines that are believed to be fading. This parallel analysis of narratives reveals commonalities in how sense of loss is characterized, highlighting a shared experience of worry-nostalgia generated from the shifting wider global foodscape.

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