Food, feminism, and fermentation. At first glance, these terms seem disparate but these domains share a common commitment to understanding complex systems in their complexity. The domains of food, feminism, and fermentation give us the theoretical tools and the language to pick apart the concrete and abstract ways that we interconnect with others. Specifically, these three domains help us examine the politics of everyday eating, how these choices are shaped, and who benefits from these decisions. At the heart of food, feminism, and fermentation are questions of power and social relations, with particular attention to how these relations are shaped by dominant ideas and how they are subsequently reshaped by critical thought and activism. These questions run parallel to contemporary conversations around food access, policy controls, and the consequences of unchecked power. In the same manner that existing food scholarship examines the social, political, economic, and symbolic contexts of food — as seen in the works of Sidney Mintz and how sugar makes empire possible, Warren Belasco and the role of food in social movements, or Julie Guthman and the limitations of alternative food movements — this work continues food studies’ inquiry into food as a medium for determining power dynamics. Tapping into the intellectual richness of feminist thought provides some theoretical ways for challenging assumptions about food and foodways. Thinking about fermentation as a metaphor for change gives traction to shifting our thoughts on what food is and what it can do. Some overlap of these domains already exist. Feminist food studies, for instance, focuses on bodies and embodiment, labour and material practices, as well as place-making on the land, in the home, and with the Earth. Also at the intersection of food and feminism are concerns for amplifying marginalized voices, dismantling dominant paradigms, and activating sites of resistance. If food studies offers a powerful lens for analyzing culture and society, then feminist food studies attends to different viewpoints within a culture and contends with its normative, socially accepted assumptions. Building on the works of food scholars who employ an explicit gender/women’s studies focus — including Kate Cairns, Josée Johnston, Jennifer Brady, Barbara Parker, Carole Counihan, Psyche Williams-Forson, Julia Ehrhardt, Rachel Slocum, Arlene Voski Avakian, Barbara Haber, Lisa Heldke, Elspeth Probyn, and Jessica Hayes-Conroy — feminist food studies foregrounds differences in social positioning, the politics that result from power relations, as well as the ideological underpinnings that operate in and through difference. These, and other concerns can be found in this first of two special issues, with the added layer of fermentation providing a different perspective on how we think about change. Fermentation is a transformation of both matter and meaning due to the work of microbes like bacteria, moulds, and yeasts. For instance, the material transformation of grapes into wine is biochemical, and the meanings associated with the resulting wine (e.g. hospitality, religious symbolism) emerge from the fermentation process. In other words, fermentation can be at once material and figurative change. Fermentation goes beyond the taste of puckery sauerkrauts and the fizzy delights of homemade kombuchas. Thinking about fermentation means accounting for multiple species, multiple senses, and multiple scales of activity. It means looking at the possibility of a multiplicitous and dynamic — instead of a singular and stultified — way of living together. Fermentation extends the concerns of food studies by contextualizing the more-than-human connections that entangle us all. How can theorizing feminism and fermentation augment food studies? Existing literature in ecofeminism offers key concepts — such as multispecies engagement, companion species, and the myth of human exceptionalism — which help to reposition the human eater as …