<p>Nutrition education often assumes a reductionist stance that overlooks structural inequity and marginalizes traditional food practices and knowledge. In response, critical food systems education (CFSE) seeks to form subjects who transform food systems. This article contributes to critical food systems education through an empirical study using participatory, arts-based research with rural secondary school students in Chiapas, Mexico. Employing photovoice as the central method, we explore youth narratives of food systems change, recognizing youth as active members of their communities who shape food systems materially and epistemologically. Youth expressed concern over the rise in diet-related disease and the decline in food traditions, situating these issues in broader transformations of rural life. Their narratives reveal how young people emotionally experience these changes while negotiating tensions between public health messaging, family food traditions, and the realities of everyday life. Across their reflections, care was a call to action that linked people, community, and environment in a relational understanding of health. These narratives point to the resilience of traditional foodways through affective connections to family and place. By centering care for family, land, and community, CFSE may contribute to community food sovereignty. The recent <i>Nueva Escuela Mexicana</i> curricular reforms create opportunities for creative, participatory approaches like photovoice to strengthen relationships between schools and communities and foster critical reflection.</p>