Novel Foods: a Technological Pathway to Food System Transformation? An Introduction

This Special Section intends to contribute to the debate within the social sciences on ‘novel foods’, broadly understood as foods providing proteins alternative to animal proteins. These are derived from a variety of new bioscientific and engineering technologies spanning cell tissue development; organisms covering plants, fungi, algae and microbes, and insects. The articles gathered in this Special Section are the outcome of the biennial 2023 Conference of the Center for Food Studies of The American University of Rome. Novel Foods are discussed from different disciplinary perspectives and their various configurations, regulatory challenges and degree of social acceptance are considered in a variety of economic, political, social and cultural contexts. Taken together, the articles reveal the array of social science questions to be tackled if ‘novel foods’ are to be part of a transition towards food system transformation, or whether they will ultimately accentuate ‘high-tech solutionism’ and associated narratives that work to the detriment of deeper and more democratic analyses and solutions.