New food risks in the contemporary globalizing society

Despite the successes of international organizations and states in the fight against hunger, the situation worsens: according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, every ninth person in the world is undernourished. At the same time, the problem of obesity among adults has become noticeable: almost every eighth suffers from it. Moreover, such polar food risks often occur in the same countries, societies and social groups. Global food shortages, hunger and food security have become key issues on the global agenda. In 2019, the World Economic Forum (WEF) presented the Global Risks Report based on a survey of almost a thousand experts on the perception of global risks. Although global risk in this context is understood as a situation of uncertainty that will entail negative consequences for some countries or economic sectors over the next ten years, such an interpretation covers only one aspect of the classical sociological definition of risk as a situation of uncertainty, in which we need to make a choice based on the dichotomy of reality and possibility, i.e., the result of the choice may be either a negative or positive consequence. In other words, it is necessary to predict trends in the development of global problems of humanity, which certainly include food risks. The issues of global food security, reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (the UN initiative for a comprehensive transformation of the world), set the global agenda, focusing also on the food and nutrition risks of contemporary society. The article explains the need for the sociological study of the nature of food risks and their new forms that have appeared under the interrelated processes of globalization and glocalization and determine the future of food systems. Based on the results of the theoretical analysis, the author provides a classification of food risks for the increasingly complex society based on sociological approaches to defining food and its rationality, new risks specific to human nutrition in risk theories, global food risk management and neoliberal versions of eliminating food risks.