Truffles and Trash : Recirculating Food in a Social Welfare State

On a fragile planet with spreading food insecurity, food waste is a political and ethical problem. In Truffles and Trash, Kelly Alexander reveals it is also an opportunity for new forms of sociality. These dynamics play out across a diverse set of locations—from a food bank with ties to the EU and a social restaurant serving low-cost meals made from supermarket surplus by an emergent immigrant labor force to a social inclusion program in an urban market with a ""zero food waste"" pop-up cafe. Alexander's close analysis illustrates the collaborative, sometimes scrappy institutional and community efforts to recuperate and redistribute food waste in Brussels, Belgium. She argues that these efforts in concert with innovative policy effectively recirculate wasted food to new publics and produce what she terms a ""spectrum of edibility."" According to Alexander, the models face challenges—including reproducing the very power dynamics across race, class, and citizenship status they seek to circumvent. They also mirror the challenges of the everyday operations of the European social welfare state, which is increasingly reliant on NGOs to meet provisioning promises. Yet she finds that they also move the needle forward in reducing food waste across one city, providing a model for major urban centers around the world.