Recent trends from alternative food movements associated with social justice have called for the right to culturally appropriate food, despite the absence of a definition or understanding of what this concept means. This has led to a variety of perspectives and ways in which this concept has been used to define social problems, but it is not clear that culturally appropriate food fosters social justice. This research analyzed academic literature to explore the ways in which culturally appropriate food is conceptualized and found four common themes: food insecurity, cultural insecurity, cultural imperialism, and imported foods that displace local foods. A social justice framework was used to analyze the relationship between these themes and culturally appropriate food to determine how useful culturally appropriate food is in creating opportunities for social justice. The results concluded that culturally appropriate food is not particularly useful in fostering social justice, but it does provide us with a greater understanding of the social problems it has been associated with.