The main purpose of this article is to study food policies and their importance for social capital formation within the context of State reform in Mexico and Latin America. In order to achieve this goal we divide our paper in three parts. In the first part, we study state reform from a new theoretical perspective, analyzing new complex proposals and their relationships with decentralization and emerging actors. Secondly, we describe the phases that social food policy has undergone, as well as its effect on social organization. Finally, we study new food policies in Mexico and their probable perspectives for success from the point of view of establishing social capital which is an important part of the emerging theories on society and state.