1. In your book Inflamed, you discuss the connections between colonialism, food systems, and physical health, particularly in relation to infectious exposures that disproportionately affect marginalized and disadvantaged groups. Could you explain the interrelation between these phenomena?
In Inflamed, we argue that the same systems that inflame the body also inflame the planet. Chronic inflammation in the body—linked to conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and depression—is not merely a matter of individual behavior but is driven by structural forces: poverty, racism, environmental degradation, poor nutrition, stress, and exposure to pollution. These are the outcomes of capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy—systems that organize our world through exploitation and hierarchy.
The very logic that drives climate change—relentless extraction, inequality, and disposability—also drives inflammation. When communities are denied clean air, decent housing, nutritious food, and equitable healthcare, their immune systems respond with constant, low-grade alarm. Social injustice literally gets under the skin. Capitalism not only generates these conditions but also thrives on their consequences, profiting from the sale of both junk food and the pharmaceuticals to treat the diseases it causes.
Moreover, the response to the climate crisis has largely reinforced these dynamics: more technofixes, more inequality, more privatized control of land and resources. Rather than dismantling the systems that create inflammation, mainstream policy has doubled down on them. If we want to heal the body, we must also heal our societies—and that means confronting the structural drivers of both biological and ecological harm.
2. The term food security is often ambiguous and frequently conflated with the mere availability of large quantities of food—regardless of quality. Why does the prevailing paradigm in food management still emphasize “more is better” rather than “better is better”?
Because “more” is easy to measure, and profits are made on volume. Corporations promise food security by growing ever more commodities, while sidestepping questions about what kind of food, for whom, and at what ecological and human cost. Most important, the question of access is never asked. The hunger we face today isn’t due to scarcity—it’s due to inequality, climate shocks, and a food system that profits from underpaying workers to the extent that the only thing many people can afford is low-quality, low nutrition food, the kind that is most profitable for the industry.
3. In recent months, we have witnessed a resurgence of food being used as a tool of warfare and as a means to impoverish and weaken adversaries. In your opinion, is there a need to update international legal frameworks to prevent such practices? How can food distribution in conflict zones be managed in a way that prevents it from becoming a form of oppression itself?
The weaponization of food is one of the oldest strategies in imperial warfare, from siege tactics to colonial famines. Today, it takes new forms—blockades, targeted destruction of agricultural infrastructure, or the manipulation of aid flows. International legal frameworks such as the Geneva Conventions are increasingly inadequate in the face of hybrid warfare and climate-fueled crises. What’s needed is not only stronger enforcement mechanisms but also the insistence of food as a human right. I note that the only countries consistently to vote against the right to food at the United Nations are the US and Israel. The problem is that we have the legal frameworks already. It’s just that states are refusing to abide by them, and shirking the consequences, which degrades the international system for everyone.
4. What is meant by “Food System Transformation,” and in what ways can innovative finance and artificial intelligence contribute to supporting this transformation?
“Transformation” is a word that’s easily co-opted, so we must be precise. True food system transformation means breaking with the extractive, colonial, and profit-maximizing logic that underpins today’s dominant model. It’s about building systems grounded in agroecology, food sovereignty, and collective care. That said, finance and technology can play a supporting role when governed democratically. But the information on which AI is trained must rest with the farmers and farmworkers who produce it. Otherwise we risk deepening surveillance, automating land grabs, and consolidating corporate power. Innovation must be in service of justice—not efficiency for its own sake.
5. Could you recommend a book and/or a film that would help deepen our understanding of the concept of an inclusive, resilient, healthy, and sustainable food system?
One powerful speculative vision is found in The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. While not solely about food, it offers a compelling account of the structural, political, and technological transformations needed to confront the climate crisis. It imagines the kinds of shifts that could create a more just and sustainable world, and challenges us to think beyond our current paradigms.
As for film, The Ants & the Grasshopper, which I co-directed, follows Malawian activist Anita Chitaya as she travels across continents confronting climate injustice and exposing the unequal distribution of power and responsibility in the food system. It presents a grounded, real-world vision of the kind of inclusive and resilient food system many are already fighting for.