Abstract

Healthy eating is challenging within a food environment that constantly exposes the public to unhealthy processed foods that are appealing and convenient. Food environments are becoming more complex with technological advances that further increase the availability and marketing of processed foods. At the same time, widespread food and nutrition misinformation and “diet culture” are contributing to negative associations with food, negatively impacting well-being. Food literacy presents an opportunity to negate some of these influences, by assisting individuals in developing the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and self-efficacy needed to make healthy dietary decisions within different contexts. Further work is required to translate a more holistic concept of food literacy into interventions rather than single aspects of it such as nutrition education, which tends to be focused on dietary standards, nutrients, and food groups. This manuscript summarizes a colloquium given at the International Food Studies Conference in 2018, where the authors presented a narrative review of the state of food literacy in Canada and chronicled four examples of initiatives that have been undertaken in various settings.