A just food system transformation is imperative to meet this century’s goals of environmental sustainability, economic fairness, and equitable social well-being. While considerations of justice are beginning to inform food system transformation debates, there remains a lack of conceptual and practical integration of these two historically separate disciplinary perspectives. This perspective therefore proposes the just transformation matrix (JUSTRA), which integrates justice and transformation concerns using an interrogative approach. Interrogatives probe the historical, present, and future intersections of justice with specific food system elements. If used conscientiously, the JUSTRA can assist a wide spectrum of food system actors in strategizing, implementing, and monitoring just food system transformations. It can also help stakeholders to more thoughtfully engage with power imbalances both among users and in the food system more broadly—if used “in bona fides.” Thus, while further testing is necessary to fully realize the potential of the JUSTRA, the matrix can become a powerful tool in multi-stakeholder dialogues to navigate unpredictable, diverse, and power-laden complexities of just food system transformations.

This paper reviews the dynamic interplay between food activism and state responses, focusing on the diverse ways and strategies used by food movements to advocate for food systems transformation. More so, in a context of growing corporate control in food systems, food activism has been promoting just and sustainable alternatives. State reactions have been evolving, ranging from repression to policy change, to, in some cases, collaboration. Through a combination of summative content analysis of key themes across the literature and a thematic exploration of case studies, the paper highlights key trends in food activism and examines how governments have responded to them. By analysing the interactions between citizens and governments, this paper offers insights for both activists and policymakers seeking to build more inclusive and participatory food governance structures, in their efforts to transform food systems.

High levels of corporate concentration and power in agrifood supply chains raise important policy concerns because they can affect food systems in adverse ways. In this paper, we argue that increased corporate concentration and power in food systems has the capacity to undermine people’s agency– that is, their capability to make choices and exercise their voice. We explore three dimensions of the relationship between concentrated corporate power and people’s agency in food systems. First, dominant firms within highly concentrated food system segments can exercise market power, which enables them to earn excess profits – often by charging higher prices, suppressing wages, and weakening livelihood opportunities. Second, dominant agrifood firms have the capacity to shape material conditions within food systems – determining prevailing technologies used in food production, working conditions, levels of processing of packaged food items, and food environments – in ways that can affect people’s choices. Third, dominant agrifood firms can exercise political power by actively pursuing strategies to influence food policy and governance processes via lobbying and other more indirect measures, weakening opportunities for broader democratic participation in food systems governance. Given these potential outcomes, more policy attention should be paid to corporate concentration and its implications for agency within food systems.

Background: Previous research has suggested that children who are exposed to chronic stress are at greater risk for childhood obesity, however little research has examined the mechanism of this association. This study aimed to investigate the association between family and household stress during the COVID-19 pandemic and children’s BMIz, and whether children’s hair cortisol concentration (HCC) mediates this association.

Methods: This study used baseline data from 228 children 2–6 years from the Family Stress Study, a prospective cohort study of families with children 2–6 years. Parents responded to an online survey which assessed family and household stressors including family functioning, home chaos, financial insecurity, food insecurity, parental depression, parenting stress, stressful life events, and COVID-19 stressors. A total family chronic stress index score was calculated from parents’ responses on these measures. Hair samples were collected from children to assess their HCC. The Hayes PROCESS mediation macro was used to assess the total, direct, and indirect effect of the family chronic stress index on child BMIz, adjusting for household income and child ethnicity/race.

Results: We found that the family chronic stress index was associated with higher child BMIz (b = 0.815, 95% CI = 0.181–1.449), but this association was not mediated by children’s HCC (b = 0.004, CI = −0.042–0.076).

Conclusions: Future research should continue to investigate hair cortisol as a measure of chronic stress among children younger than 6 years and explore other mechanisms of how chronic stress is associated with children’s weight outcomes, such as through parenting practices that influence children’s eating behaviour or physical activity, or children’s weight-related behaviours.

Urgent calls for food system transformation have spurred a variety of responses globally. In some cases, these calls have been answered through top-down led processes, driven by public agencies to design and implement measures that can drive societies towards more viable patterns of development. In other cases, transformation processes have been ignited by community level actors who addressed sustainability issues with context-specific solutions. The broad range of actors raises the question of whether it is top-down or bottom-up processes and actors that are better placed to deliver the fundamental and system level changes that characterise transformation. Through a systematic review, we identified 40 case studies across 24 countries to investigate the role of top-down or bottom-up processes in transformation, whether the two might intertwine, and with what results. We propose five different types of interactions: Autonomous Bottom-Up, Collaborative Bottom-Up, Top-Down Struggles and Resourceful Bottom-Up, Collaborative Top-Down and Transformation Alliances. Based on our analysis, we propose a new heuristic of roles and interactions between different actors. We suggest a shift from dichotomic views on top-down and bottom-up actor roles towards the concept of “transformation functions,” which would re-centre the discussion around the existing or needed capabilities for transformation in different contexts. Finally, we call for further research to determine how different transformation functions need to become more synchronised -or coordinated-to accelerate transformation.