Food journalism

Food journalism is a field of journalism that focuses on news and current events related to food, its production and culture of producing and consuming that food. Typically food journalism includes a scope broader than the work of food critics who analyze restaurants and food products, and is similar to, and sometimes treated as a sub-genre of food writing, which documents the experience and history of food.

Food journalism often explores the impact of current events on food, such as how the Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food industry, or larger issues, such as impacts of climate change on food production. Increasingly these themes overlap with public health journalism, political journalism and economic journalism. This expands on themes traditional to food criticism which has tended to focus on fine dining, and other kinds of food writing such as cookbook writing. These themes are similar to the themes covered in agricultural journalism, which focuses on the agriculture industry for agricultural audiences.

The contemporary field of food journalism grew in the mid-20th century, especially as issues like food rationing during and after World War II. In the United States, the Association of Food Journalists provides professional standards and a code of ethics.