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More recently, Hoke and Leatherman (2019) demonstrated how post-conflict political economic conditions in the same area were associated with improved child growth and nutrition. Hoke (2020) has further demonstrated the continued importance of land sovereignty and home food production for child growth among families in Nuñoa across a wide range of ecological and economic contexts. Together, these studies provide ample evidence over time of how broad historical processes shape social, political, and economic vulnerabilities and opportunities that in turn shape dialectical interactions between lived realities and health.

At the start of the century, a report from the Worldwatch Institute (Gardner and Halweil 2000) estimated that over one billion of the world’s population was underfed, and FAO (2002) reported that 840 million people in the world were undernourished and six million children under the age of five died each year from hunger. Thus, an important focus in critical biocultural studies has been to explore links between economic vulnerability, food security, diets, and nutrition (see Himmelgreen et al. this volume). The role that the microbiome can play in nutrition (Benezra et al. 2012; Thompson 2012) and the role early nutritional stress can play in later health adds a further dimension to understanding links between food insecurity and health.