In the past decade or so, social science research focusing on the correlation between food and social inequalities has been gaining momentum. A popular empirical field to measure such correlation in Northern America has been identified as the “Neighborhood”. Recently, neighborhood level characteristics, such as the availability of healthy food, the quality of the physical environment and the area’s socioeconomic status have been proposed as explanations for the continuing obesity epidemic in the United States of America, leading scholars to coin the concept of “Food desert” where it is much easier to find junk food than to buy a single apple. Looking at the urban and suburban social fabric of America’s big cities, a neighborhood approach might prove to be consistent with concern about obesity-related health inequalities, since it is clear that some groups adhere more closely to health recommendations than others, and that obesity prevalence varies widely among countries, states, cities and neighborhoods. Hence, researchers have begun to explore the wider social and contextual determinants of body weight and obesity-related behaviors in hope of identifying new approaches to curbing the rising tide of obesity.

The objective of the 2023 Food and Society conference in Kuching, Sarawak, Borneo island (East Malaysia) was to reflect on safe and healthy food accessibility, in Asia-Pacific region in beyond, in order to address social inequalities gaps. The main conference theme, namely “Food and Social Inequalities” has been broken down into four sub-themes to enable more focused research activities and generate experts’ panels.

181 participants from 16 different countries attended the conference.