Cultural and medical anthropologist Alyshia Gálvez discusses her groundbreaking book on changing food policies, systems and practices in Mexico and Mexican communities in the United States, Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies and the Destruction of Mexico, (UC Press, 2018). Elaborating the ways Mexican are impacted by trade and economic policies and the wider public health and cultural implications from the the precipitous rise of obesity and diabetes in Mexico to the, Gálvez expands upon trade policies like NAFTA and USMCA that have chipped away at Mexican culinary traditions. Across the border, Gálvez considers the ways in which culinary culture is kept alive for expatriate Mexicans in the US by paqueteros, an informal brokering service of grassroots entrepreneurs who connect people on both sides of the border with goods that maintain culinary traditions that otherwise would have long been forgotten for emigrant communities.

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