This article explores the dynamics of a discursive contest between a “Real Food” frame in which, for concerned consumers and activists, processed food is an unhealthy product of a troubled food system, and a “Real Facts” frame in which, for food science and food industry advocates, processed food is a solution to the need to provide abundant, safe, and nutritious food. The analysis focuses on two school curricula that are vying to teach children “where food comes from.” I argue that the “food” in these two curricula is not the same thing. Within the Food, Inc . Discussion Guide, food is connection, responsibility, and politics. The Alliance to Feed the Future curricula respond with a strategic anti-politics of food, asserting that food can only be “what it obviously is” and framing Real Food's challenge as scientific and technical ignorance.

This conversation is part of a special issue on “Critical Nutrition” in which multiple authors weigh in on various themes related to the origins, character, and consequences of contemporary American nutrition discourses and practices, as well as how nutrition might be known and done differently. In this section authors discuss the aims and effects of nutrition interventions. In terms of aims, various authors emphasize how such interventions act as pedagogies of citizenship, governmentalize people as metric consumers, or reflect colonial practices. In terms of effects, authors discuss how the project of nutrition works in class/race differentiation, the disempowerment of mothers, or the interest of transnational corporations. All of the authors essentially challenge not only nutrition’s fundamental claims to neutrality and objectivity, but also its claims to benevolence.

This conversation is part of a special issue on “Critical Nutrition” in which multiple authors weigh in on various themes related to the origins, character, and consequences of contemporary American nutrition discourses and practices, as well as how nutrition might be known and done differently. In this section authors focus on the hegemony of reductionism and quantification in modern-day nutritional knowledge by discussing the historical foundations and ethical dimensions, as well as the scientific absences, in this knowledge. Reviewing various challenges to the energy balance model, they all suggest that the promotion of good nutrition is far from simple. Some authors also discuss why various “invisible” nutrients and measures of good nutrition continue to hold so much sway in nutrition discourse.

This conversation is part of a special issue on “Critical Nutrition” in which multiple authors weigh in on various themes related to the origins, character, and consequences of contemporary American nutrition discourses and practices, as well as how nutrition might be known and done differently. In this section, authors reflect on the limits of standard nutrition in understanding the relationship between food and human health. They also focus on how nutrition practitioners are or could be creating different practices for how nutritional information is made available, shared, and absorbed. Among the different frameworks under discussion are individualized nutrition, ecological nutrition, critical dietary literacy, feminist nutrition, and technologies of humility.