Editorial: Food, Nature, and Health: Dueling Epistemologies

Over the past two decades, the importance of addressing the complexity of the food system in ways that draw on new approaches to knowledge generation and new research paradigms has attracted significant attention (1, 2). This research topic explores the nexus of public health, food systems, food behavior, and food ways, focusing on belief systems, values, assumptions, and relationships to the food system, and approaches to understanding the impacts of food systems on human health. We propose some guidelines for consideration in designing research: • Recognize that knowledge and practices in use by traditional societies for a long period of time probably have contemporary value (e.g., Payyappallimana and Venkatasubramanian). • Initiate dialog between researchers in industrialized and traditional societies (e.g., Groot and Van’t Hooft) and compare practices in different kinds of societies (“Western” and “Eastern” in Dubé et al.). • Question assumptions be aware that good intentions are no insurance against causing harm, and be open to the emergence of new information (Nair et al.). Assumptions include reliance on the scientific method as the only legitimate test of truth (3–6). • Be aware that diagnoses focused on only part of the system are unlikely to effectively address underlying issues (Blay-Palmer, Keleman Saxena et al., and Jones et al.).