In light of a severe, changing and globally implicative New Food Equation marked perhaps above all else by the dynamics of a new, bimodal food insecurity and the simultaneous rising importance of cities, new approaches to address food security at urban scales suggest promise. But as such efforts are relatively new, the discourses and activities of urban actors are understood to only a limited extent. Moreover, while attention to food security per se is robust and growing, attention to the discursive and narrative dimensions that ultimately construct both the real nutritional achievements and the real experiential implications of such policy is not. In this research, I apply analytical methods informed by the interpretive, critical and ethnographic traditions to understand (some of) the cultural, ideological and philosophical particularities of these new dynamics and contexts, examining the cases of two large cities in the North and South, New York City and Bogotá. Tandem to the empirical work, I explore the philosophical tenets that ground food security efforts in the two studied cities and more generally, and I finally settle upon the purposefully normative appeal for motion towards a new concept: dignified food security.