The Global Health Watch provides an alternative assessment of the gross inequalities in health worldwide, "watches" the institutions of global health and development governance, and makes recommendations for new approaches to some of the most intractable health problems in the world today. We would like your assistance and input in writing and sourcing human interest stories written in a simple narrative style. Where it is not possible to integrate stories submitted within chapters, we will put them on the web site. We would like both positive and negative stories, successes and failures, etc. The "Food and Globalisation" chapter framework summary is below. FOOD AND GLOBALIZATION Food is integral to our health. It is also part of our culture; it helps define who we are as individuals, communities and societies. Yet in the process of global market integration, it has become a commodity, a commodity like any other, traded around the world like oil or steel, the importance of its production reduced to a factor of economic profit or loss. But food is not like steel or oil. And treating it like a commodity is affecting the health of people around the world. This chapter will examine how the processes driving the integration of global food markets ? specifically trade, foreign investment and the growth of transnational food companies ? affects our health. It focuses on the growing phenomenon of diet-related chronic diseases and their associated risk factors of overweight/obesity, hypertension and high cholesterol. It also looks at under-nutrition and food safety. We are calling for case studies and human interest stories to demonstrate this and are particularly interested in: - Personal experiences of how the quality, prices, availability and safety of foods consumed are being affected by trade and the transnational food companies; - In your country, does the availability of food imports undermine domestic production in a way that threatens food security? - Experiences of the effects of globalization on under nutrition. Does it play a role in the persistence of under-nutrition or are there cases when it has helped alleviate under-nutrition? - Have the diets of local communities changed? Is this because of the low price of imported food and the availability of nutrient poor food high in fats, sweeteners and processed foods? - Experiences of food-borne disease as a result of food contaminated with microbiological and chemical hazards or unconventional agents. More information on GHW can be found on www.ghwatch.org. Information on this and other case can be found on http://www.phmovement.org/ghwatch/ <http://www.phmovement.org/ghwatch/> and the GHW website http://www.ghwatch.org/call_case_studies.php. <http://www.ghwatch.org/call_case_studies.php.> Please submit case studies to ghw@hst.org.za <mailto:ghw%40hst.org.za>.