Food systems and sports markets have been developing as topics of professional and scholarly inquiry and research for the last quarter of a century. However, related literature tends to incoherently apply global concepts and overgeneralize terms that ignore the specific contexts (historical, biological, social, political) of that particular food system and sports market.

The globalization of the food system, the governance of multinational agri-food corporations, the increasing power of sports industry, the advances in science and technology, the tremendous impact of nutrition information communicated in all media channels and journalism, and the growing problem of diet-related diseases, raise many moral concerns about how food systems are emerging and transforming. These trajectories trigger many questions about the well-grounded actions and type of policies that should be implemented to ensure the just and equitable provision of nutritious food and healthy active lifestyle by an environmentally sustainable food system.

As a reaction against the globalization, standardization and unethical nature of the industrial food and sports system, Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) emerged in the 1990s. AFNs represent a mix of key actors, various activities and ideas, and assorted diets that form a heterogenous structure in opposition to the dominant global industrial food system and what it represents and how it is thoroughly linked to the sports capitalist system.

Although consumers today benefit from a vast range of food and sports products, the global food system is failing to deliver healthy diets using sustainable production methods and numerous inequities exist in the global system itself. Therefore, a comprehensive multidisciplinary interpretation of the global food and sports systems is fundamental to understand: 1) the issues that centre not just on food and the relationship of people with the food they eat, but also on the way resources and people are used to produce and consume food; 2) the gigantic role of media and journalism to store and deliver information (mis-, dis-, mal- information) to people and changing their perceptions and attitudes towards food and sports matters; 3) the actions of the agri-food industry in the production of food for the purpose of profit; 4) the strategic communication model used by the sports industry to help sport entities to achieve their goals; and 5) the interactions of both industries with people as consumers.

Alongside the emergence of new information communication technologies, our understanding and practice of AFNs is changing as they take on new forms to explore potential territories of socio-economic change perhaps toward a more sustainable yet ethical food system. Hence, a new “cultural economy” approach for studying food systems characteristics and transformations is required to fully capture the governance of industrial giants and changing power realities in food and sports systems. Besides, the need for adequate enlightening communication strategies and clear nutrition (food and sports) policy planning informed and underpinned by ethics analysis have never been more pressing than it is today.

The Special Issue on Food and Sports Systems: Between Media, Journalism and Strategic Communication calls for papers on the following topics which are indicative of those that raise moral and ethical concerns relating to food systems, sports markets, food and sports industries, media and communication, journalism and related news, and societies and people as consumers. This list is not exhaustive: