Food security has long been a critical issue for all states and societies. It has often been framed as a technical problem, to do with farm production and agricultural yields. But the overall quantity of food available, whether globally or nationally, is rarely the problem. The question of who goes hungry depends on price, access, and accountability. Addressing hunger through allocating public funds for food distribution schemes, reducing tariffs on food imports, or by contrast creating famine conditions as in Gaza today, are highly political choices, the result of pressures from different interests. The big questions for food systems today demand close collaboration between social science, ecological and natural science, and the people with power and agency to generate better outcomes. Social scientists need to ask awkward questions, such as who is the expert, and how to unmask the power and interests generating obesity, deforestation, and massive losses of biodiversity.