A world of food

In Perth, Professor Gallegos led a significant project on culturally relevant foods for aged care facilities, creating World of Food manuals to provide information and recipes for foods and meals that were essential for residents from countries outside Australia.

This sparked her interest, and she embarked on a PhD in cultural studies and sociology, completed over seven years. Her thesis was called ‘Mapping ethno foodscapes in Australia’, but was better known by the more popular title of ‘Stir fry, ravioli with chips’.

“I looked at how have we as Australians developed an eclectic cultural palette, which has always been an interest of mine,” she said.

Professor Gallegos recounts another project she led called ‘Good food for new arrivals’ which aimed to support refugees by providing advocacy and education about feeding children in a new country including how to access culturally relevant foods.

“We got down and cooked food with newly arrived refugees, we asked what was important to them, and how they were accessing their food," she said.

“At one session, I brought some millet which is an important ingredient for a traditional porridge in the Middle East and parts of Africa called asida. One of my participants asked if she could have it because she couldn’t find it in Australia and had been buying birdseed and picking out the millet.

“That is cultural food insecurity, and it’s still happening to refugees who arrive in Australia and can’t access the foods of their homelands.

“If they do get food parcels, it has cornflakes and baked beans. We said, how about we provide a food parcel that’s relevant to the cultural group that they’re from?”

Through her work, Professor Gallegos has also had the opportunity to visit Vietnam and Malaysia to build local nutrition capacity, as a visiting professor supervising groups of nutrition students.

“There is no better way to do the research than be on the ground and see the environment, see the people, talk to them, understand. And then be able to use your power to get in front of politicians to say hey, it gives you so much richness to your work.”

In 2008, Professor Gallegos returned to Brisbane, securing her first academic role as a senior lecturer at QUT – a full circle moment.

“I always wanted to do something with food, but if you told me when I was at school, or doing undergraduate that I’ll end up as a professor, I wouldn’t have believed it,” she said.

Helping Australian children grow up healthy, and supporting families in putting food on the table has led Professor Gallegos to develop policy strategies for alleviating household food and nutrition security.

Food insecurity is a rising concern in Australia, with 3.4 million Australian households (32 per cent) experiencing food insecurity and the cost-of-living crisis significantly impacting household budgets.

To counter this, a strong-held passion for Professor Gallegos is the introduction of free or subsidised school-provided meals across Australian primary and high schools.

“There are only a handful of high-income countries in the world that don’t do school meals including Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia. The UK and the US have had them since at least post-World War Two. Australia used to have a school milk program which went for 10 years and stopped in 1973,” she said

“There are opportunities for us to build and transform local food systems, build sustainability and mitigate climate change, while giving kids a chance to socialise while they eat and improve their diet quality. So many benefits.

“But a school meal in Mount Isa is going to look very different to a school meal in Ascot, so we need to co-design what that might look like with families and communities.”

She champions this cause as head of the landmark Centre for Childhood Nutrition Research, originally established with funding from the Queensland Children’s Hospital Foundation and Woolworths.

Some of the research projects she has been involved in as part of the centre include:

• A breastfeeding text messaging pilot with the Australian Breastfeeding Association.
• The Learning, Eating, Active Play and Sleep (LEAPS) program, which uses the Get Up and Grow guidelines to improve nutrition and physical activity in early education and care.
• School Foodies, a model for building food literacy and improving diet quality among primary school children in Queensland, using co-design to fit each school.
• Feeding Families in Tough Times – a partnership between researchers, families with a lived experience of food insecurity and key stakeholders including providers of emergency food relief, government agencies, health services, not-for-profit organisations and charities.

When pondering what she’d like her legacy to be, Professor Gallegos says her narrative is all about food and social justice.

“I would like people in positions of power to reach out, listen and speak up.

“It’s about asking, how do I marry my learnt expertise with your lived experience?”

“As one of our participants said, 'When people say that person has a lot on their plate, we have to realise that everyone’s plates are different sizes.' Don’t be judgemental about people taking their kids through the drive-through for fast food. If you’re just managing to cope, it’s hard to get a meal, any meal, on the table. You just don’t know what’s happening behind closed doors.”