This paper examines changing predictions made between 2000 and 2023 in a selection of newspapers and magazines concerning the future of the North American foodscape. The first section reviews existing literature, especially that by John Urry (2016) on the study of the future and explores Warren Belasco's 2006 discussion about how reports of the future of food have changed over time. The second section, on methodology, describes how surveys of articles that included the keywords "future food" published in The New York Times, The Economist, Time Magazine, and The Utne Reader from 2000 to 2023 were assembled and classified according to theme to enable changes in content to be analyzed. As the paper's subsequent analysis reports, while each media's record is varied in detail, from around the year 2010 a broad consensus around the importance of environmental issues in the future of food begins to occur in all four sources. While such a finding is not in itself surprising, as the paper concludes, it does confirm the hypothesis advanced by Warren Belasco (2006) that predictions largely reflect present concerns and threaten to be overwhelmed by them. Keywords: future of food, forecasts, North America, newspapers.

This collection of 28 essays from an accomplished range of Canadian writers makes a useful contribution to food studies, and—with its focus on personal reflections—nicely complements the most recently available global history of dumplings (Gallani, 2015). While impossible to consider every essay, this review highlights a number that are of interest to geographers, and might provide excellent class readings for undergraduate courses in human geography, migration, or the world of food. But, first, what exactly is a dumpling? A useful definition is provided by Rachel Laudan (2013). Associating the diffusion of stuffed boiled dumplings (in the Old World, at least) with the spread of the Mongol Empire, she has argued that most types had in common a wheat dough wrapper, a filling of meat (usually lamb) and onions, and a pleated seal. Related, but through more uncertain ways, were the baked or fried forms (such as the samosa) and the ravioli—types that appeared on the fringes of the Pax Mongolica. The limitations of such a definition are ignored in this collection, however, and an approach that considers a wider range of dumpling-like recipes is promoted—a range that is, indeed, extensive as illustrated by Meegan Lim's drawings that are such a wonderful feature of the book (see Figure 1), or the “world listing” (pp. 11–13) which while only partial, still sums up to over 60 different types (a total that includes examples such as China's wonton dumplings, Ukrainian vareniki, Turkish manti, and siopao from the Philippines). The inclusion of unlikely examples, such as the Cornish pasty or the calzone, might raise questions about the value of such a broad-brush approach (both, by the way, excluded from Gallani's world list of dumplings), but it does provide an opportunity for authors to reflect on their reasoning. Thus, at one point we are told of a rare 17th-century adjective, “dump” (which apparently meant “of the consistency of dough”), to account for the “dumplingness of a matzo ball”—a rather tortuous exercise (and one that the lack of sources, either here or in Gallani, has prevented checking), but one that does lead contributor Michal Stein to the reasonable conclusion “that for the filled variety [of dumpling], it's the wrapper—not the filling—that makes it a dumpling” (p. 36). In any case, as the book's title suggests, this is not intended to be an academic treatise. Rather, as scholars of food studies have recognized, such reporting faces the challenge of examining a long under-regarded aspect of our lives: our food. To interpret the disparate set of sources involved, it is necessary to employ all of the talents of someone such as the creative non-fiction writer—the very set of skills that the collection of authors gathered in this collection showcase to excellent effect. Thus, from the first section, “the Wrapper,” Karon Liu considers mapping Toronto using the variety of dumplings as a key, Christina Gonzales builds on the theme of diffusion with her look at the development of siopao in the Philippines, while the related role of food in establishing cultural identity is aired in André Alexis's piece on growing up in Trinidad avoiding iguana stew and dumplings. Among the engaging memoirs that make up the second section (“The Filling”), Mekhala Chaubal captures the difficulty many have duplicating a grandmother's recipe, in this case for modak; Chantal Braganza recalls her father cooking the potato chops of “coastal Kenya's Goan expat community” in their Mississauga kitchen; and Miles Morrisseau lovingly recreates the Métis-style drop dumpling soup of his Manitoba childhood. A number of useful essays in the third section (“The Sauce”) and the “Conclusion” raise some important overall problems. Not least of these are those intertwined culinary issues of authenticity and cultural appropriation. As the essays in the second section show, family traditions are being continually refashioned, so “authenticity” here is clearly going to be a slippery concept, a point addressed by John Lorinc's observation that “dumplings exist in defiance of our era's obsession with lovely cookbooks and five-star online recipes that promise both gastronomical delights and authenticity” (p. 218; emphasis in the original). It seems that the dumpling's very malleability ensures its survival—as Lorinc suggests, “[s]witch up the recipe a bit from how you were taught, then pass along your own riff as it proceeds along its temporal journey into the future” (p. 219). But how far can this defiance of tradition go? Addressing this question, Navneet Alang remarks “while, obviously, no one is harmed when a mom-and-pop shop produces a dumpling that mixes Asian and Caribbean flavours, one can't exactly say the same thing when a chain restaurant does it … a way, of yet again, taking from racialized minorities with no recompense” (pp. 206–207). Important as this is, Alang extends his argument to suggest that for the “invested cultural critic” questions such as these indicate there can be no one way of approaching the dumpling—it may, after all, be simply “a small morsel of food” and not “the whole kaleidoscopic breadth of human experience”—in other words, “[w]hat fills the dumpling can be important, but it is the narrative around it that counts” (pp. 208–209). Whether it is the wrapper or the filling that ultimately provides the meaning, this is clearly a valuable and thought-provoking collection; one which the addition of a guide to further reading and reference to Gallani could make an invaluable introduction to the dumpling.

The modern food truck, especially those found in Europe and North America, in many ways represents only the latest manifestation of a long tradition of mobile street‐food vending. It is one that comes with a number of advantages – such as job creation and local economic revival – but this comes with a number of disadvantages, such as those of cultural appropriation and unsustainable practices. Important as these issues are, the recent development of the “gourmet” food truck, with its loyal followers connected via social media, offers the possibilities of new types of places and a wider view of the world's cuisines.

Physical geographers have long shown an interest in necrogeography – the spatial study of human burial practices (especially cemeteries, gravestones, and memorials) – to the extent that their study has informed investigations concerning processes of landscape change, biogeographic developments, or environmental alteration. This paper argues that such contributions can be enhanced if set within the wider study of the commemoration of death. Since the influential work of Philippe Ariès on Western attitudes towards death, scholars have been alerted to the physical implications of cultural changes in burial practices. Alternatively, others have more recently used the concept of the ‘deathscape’ to place such changes within their analyses. The paper concludes that physical geography’s contribution to the study of necrogeography could be enhanced by the adoption of such broader frameworks.

After a seventy-year ban, the Canadian city of Montreal began a pilot program in 2013 that permitted a limited number of food trucks back onto its streets. Such an experiment offers opportunities to re-evaluate the “traditional view” that food trucks are part of an informal economy in which new arrivals to a city can create jobs for themselves, and the contrary positions that newer “foodie” food trucks have either opened a “breach” with that informal economy by catering only to the more affluent, or offer instead a “bridgehead” by bringing newer cuisines to the street where everyone can experience them. This paper explores the merits of these viewpoints through analysis of the long-running debate over Montreal’s ban on food trucks; the pilot program’s regulations permitting such trucks back into the city; a survey of the goals of the trucks’ operators; and, fourthly, an analysis of customer reviews on the social media site Yelp. This evaluation concludes that Montreal’s food truck experiment should not be interpreted as either a “breach” or a “bridgehead” – rather, it represents the use of food trucks as a pawn (or “Trojan horse”), in a much larger strategy by city planners to promote Montreal through “place branding”.

Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennesVolume 59, Issue 3 p. e83-e83 Reviews / Comptes rendus The Consuming Geographies of Food: Diet, Food Deserts and Obesity by Hillary J. Shaw, Routledge, London and New York, 2014, 211 pp., cloth $174.33 (ISBN 978-0415818704) Alan Nash, Alan Nash Concordia UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Alan Nash, Alan Nash Concordia UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 12 August 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12213Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. References Guthman, J. 2011. Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shaw, H. J. 2006. Food deserts: Towards the development of a classification. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 88(2): 231–247. Citing Literature Volume59, Issue3Fall / automne 2015Pages e83-e83 ReferencesRelatedInformation

We investigate the question of whether a query Q can be answered using a set V of views. We first define the problem in information-theoretic terms: we say that V determines Q if V provides enough information to uniquely determine the answer to Q . Next, we look at the problem of rewriting Q in terms of V using a specific language. Given a view language V and query language Q , we say that a rewriting language R is complete for V -to- Q rewritings if every Q ∈ Q can be rewritten in terms of V ∈ V using a query in R , whenever V determines Q . While query rewriting using views has been extensively investigated for some specific languages, the connection to the information-theoretic notion of determinacy, and the question of completeness of a rewriting language have received little attention. In this article we investigate systematically the notion of determinacy and its connection to rewriting. The results concern decidability of determinacy for various view and query languages, as well as the power required of complete rewriting languages. We consider languages ranging from first-order to conjunctive queries.

The work reported in this paper is an outgrowth of my research on the evolution of restaurants in Montreal. It began initially as speculations about how the changing world of restaurants may have affected the domestic foodscape. Since 1951, Montreal has experienced considerable growth in the number of restaurants that serve the city. The growth has been accompanied by a significant increase in both the number and variety of establishments offering menus of an international flavour. Often called “ethnic restaurants,” the cause of their proliferation has been debated, but it is clear that the opportunity to experience the cuisines of the world in one locale allows for local foodways to be exposed to global influences. Should they find foods or menus from elsewhere more appealing or believe them to offer a healthier alternative to their current diet, Montrealers now enjoy greater variety in their restaurant eating experiences (Nash 2009: 9-16). The extent to which having what one scholar called the “the world on a plate” (Denker 2003) in the city’s restaurants translates into more mindful eating practices, either in the public realm or in the domestic foodscape, remains to be investigated. The relationship between dining in a public restaurant and eating in the privacy of the home might not initially be clear; nor might it be immediately obvious how changes in one of these two spheres would necessarily lead to changes in the other. On further reflection, however, I suggest three main reasons that would lead one to expect some connections between restaurants and the domestic foodscape. First, because many North Americans eat both inside and outside the home at different times during any given week, it would make sense