various factors inherent in the food system that contribute to the current state of vegetable underconsumption in America. Using this example, the question could be stated as follows: What are the factors— specific to the built environment—that either fail to promote, or inhibit, the consumption of vegetables among U.S. Americans? With the stated question in mind, the investigator turns the wheel of the Food Complex Data Dial to rest on one major factor along the outside edge, such as "Social/Cultural." The windows of the data dial reveal that social and cultural aspects of the food complex affect other factors in that there exist missed opportunities for the promotion of pluralistic democracy through dietary differentiation (political), a decline in local community life due to food dollars going for non-local food products (economic), an increase in diet-related illnesses that is concurrent with a shift away from culturally-based food practices to diets predicated on cheap, processed food (public health), and a loss of environmental biodiversity because farmers and gardeners no longer grow the variety of produce that they used to (environmental). These general statements have specific implications for the issue of vegetable underconsumption in the built environment that best lend themselves to a set of queries (Table 5.2) that in turn spur ideation of landscape-specific solutions. The Food Complex Data Dial can then be rotated to focus on another aspect (political, environmental, economic, public health) and the investigation is repeated, first with the general statements of the relationship between aspects, then by developing queries that are specific to the topic being explored.
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