Reframing food regulation within nutritional ecology: biocultural evidence and indigenous food systems in Australia and Aotearoa.

Food safety regulation governing traditionally used foods is grounded in Western epistemological concepts that do not accommodate Indigenous knowledge systems. In Australia and Aotearoa, determining whether a traditionally used food can enter commercial markets requires documented evidence of a history of safe use, a standard that treats knowledge as legitimate only once it has been transcribed, rendering tens of thousands of years of Indigenous oral knowledge inadmissible. Despite growing commercial interest in native foods with a history of traditional use, Indigenous peoples remain significantly underrepresented in an industry built on their knowledge. In this Perspective I argue that this standard is not the neutral evidentiary threshold it is designed to be, and that it is also scientifically incomplete when viewed through the lens of nutritional ecology, which holds that diet and safety are inseparable from their ecological and cultural context. Excluding orally held knowledge from safety assessment means losing precisely the factors that determine how a food functions in practice, including preparation, combination, seasonality, and the accumulated record of sustained human exposure. Drawing on Aboriginal food systems and Indigenous epistemological principles, I propose a biocultural evidence approach built on three principles: a dedicated regulatory category for traditionally used foods, Indigenous authority over knowledge validation, and evidence requirements proportionate to actual risk. Recognising Indigenous food knowledge in this way would advance food sovereignty by allowing communities to participate in markets on their own terms, supporting cultural continuity and the community wellbeing outcomes that flow from self-determined participation.