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The notion of cultural acceptability is often called forth as a necessary component of food security, yet there is a lack of guidance in literature and policy as to how to operationalize this concept. Without specifying what cultural acceptability means, the concept risks becoming watered down, discounted, or obsolete in practice. This review strives to speak to those gaps by cataloging the connotations and implications of cultural acceptability in literature on urban food policy, food security, and associated topics. We explore the ways in which cultural acceptability has been invoked explicitly and implicitly in policy, planning, and scholarly literatures on food security in recent years in order to better understand what cultural acceptability has come to mean, how it is being utilized, and how it can be operationalized toward more flexible and appropriate urban food policy. We discuss ways in which cultural acceptability …