«Tell me what you eat, I’ll tell who you are»

Diet habits as identity manifesto

Eat: a daily act

From the book of local recipes to the extreme food regime’s poster: on food everything has already been written. This massive media reach shows that eating is a cultural phenomenon. With the term “to eat”, we do not mean the simple act of feeding, but a collection of values, rules, beliefs and objects which are transmitted from one generation to the next.

A lot of people think the separation between the physiological need and the culinary culture is one of the traits that distinguishes the human species from the rest of the animal world. Assuming this separation, diet habits become a way to describe the societies and the people who compose them: what guides their individual and collective choices, how they organize themselves, how they relate to those who are different. Intertwining many areas of life, the daily gesture of eating acquires the ability to tell who we were, who we are and who we could become.

Choosing what we eat: between habits and rebellion, traditions and activism

The value that people give to food is not absolute either in time or space. For example, the practice of starving is experienced differently in various populations of the world, and in some of them it has changed over the centuries. Through the renunciation of the meal, some values are handed down, but within the populations the individuals are those who take them and give them importance in practice. The autonomous choice of whether or not to accept certain social norms related to food determines the entry of an individual into the society. Choosing what to eat is part of the growth process to become adults.

Therefore, it is not surprising that many children choose to change their diet in the course of adolescence. While growing up, some people consolidate family habits, sometimes reassured by the fact that “it has always been so” (even when it is not true); others take the opportunity to distance themselves from it. The possibility of rejecting the tradition is always the engine of change, but in the field of alimentation this possibility has an impact that has immediate effect: what to eat from that moment on.

The assumption that individual choices have a tangible effect on public life is at the basis of movements aimed at safeguarding the planet’s resources, such as “Fridays for Future” (FFF). The activists, even with their diet, become promoters of a change that has a cost for other people. The presence of a minority that eats differently from the rest of the community pushes the market to put an effort to meet the demand. This effort translates into the sale of some products more than others; companies and workers will be forced to change their supply chain, resize it and, in some cases, close it (or open a new one). Choosing what to eat is therefore a political gesture, because it affects public life. The message carried by movements like FFF, which is often not understood, is that the cost required by the community, in this case to change the food chain, is less than the cost that extreme events due to climate change will entail.

Is it true that “Not choosing is a choice”?

While the environmental sustainability of products is becoming a priority for those who decide what to put in the shopping bag, North America and Europe are coming to terms with more and more people suffering from eating disorders. On the one hand, institutions perpetually promote educational projects in this field. On the other hand, this situation could be a proof that in order to educate on what, how much and how to eat, it is also important to consider all other aspects that constitute a person’s daily life.

For example: how much time and energy can a person invest to inquire about products, to decide what to buy and cook? Although there are people who decide not to choose what ends up on their plate, it is factual that with a full-time job it is difficult to invest the remaining hours in their own nutrition. In some more economically disadvantaged conditions, free time is considered a real privilege. Whenever institutions want to implement an effective project on food education, this should provide a priori a social condition where all people have the same amount of time and money to be able to reserve information on how to build their diet.

Responsibility and awareness. A tale of a confused consumer

Even if an individual has received an education and has the necessary resources, he would still find it difficult to orient himself in front of the myriad of possible choices inside (and outside) a supermarket. In the food sector, there has been a watering down of information about food due to marketing for several years. Various essays by Dario Bressanini, including Le Bugie nel carrello or the more recent Fa bene o fa male, deal in detail with this phenomenon. By the increasing availability of information that is immediately accessible through the media, the consumer is flooded by the infodemic stream. In its protection, only (national and international) institutions can dialogue with companies and limit this phenomenon through legislation, both on products and on their sponsorship. The responsibility of companies on which products are most consumed (and therefore on their environmental impact) is much greater than the individual one.

This sentence may seem in contradiction with what was previously reported on the impact of individual choices. Again, the keystone are the institutions. Where there are groups of consumers who express a desire for change through their purchasing choices, it is up to the institutions to take care of these groups (usually the minority) and dialogue with companies to meet the new demand. Two examples are the certifications for organic products or the Fairtrade® brand. In the current debate, institutions must move ahead to regulate the new food market shares that are opening up, from the consumption of protein products derived from insects to those obtained from in vitro culture.

Is what we eat that defines who we are?

It emerges from the above that through food it is possible to have an image of the society as a whole. As a result, the picture that is presented is complex and there is not a super-partes protagonist on which everything depends, but there are individual actors that make up the reality: producers, distribution companies, marketing companies, institutions, individual consumers. In such a context, reiterating the pressing infodemia to which people are subjected, it is normal that they feel crushed in the corner, without decision-making power. For this reason, becoming aware of the functioning of the food chain offers the possibility to feel once again the master of your choices.

However, there is a downside. When you acquire a lot of new knowledge, these can be circumscribed in an information chamber that, in addition to the notions (which are not always transparent and well documented), brings a series of moral values in which it is easy to recognize themselves. The risk is that people decide to follow a certain diet not in the light of the new learned knowledge, but only to define themselves through that diet. In these cases, the “complete package” tends to be adopted and the new diet is seldom fitted to personal needs. This fidelity to what literally becomes a “food regime” is rewarded also through self-recognition within a defined group.

It is important to note that the combination of the search for its own identity and the information disorder due to aggressive marketing – that does not leave room for personal reflection but offers more and more certain answers – may lead to not recognizing greenwashing operations or, even worse, real scams.

Reference

Daniel L. Rosenfeld, Anthony L. Burrow, The unified model of vegetarian identity: A conceptual framework for understanding plant-based food choices, in «Appetite», 2017, n. 112, pp. 78-95; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2017.01.017.

Isobel R. Contento et al., Understanding the food choice process of adolescents in the context of family and friends, in «Journal of Adolescent Health», vol. 38, 2006, n. 5, pp. 575-582; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2005.05.025.

Dario Bressanini, Le bugie nel carrello. Le leggende e i trucchi del marketing sul cibo che compriamo, Milano, Chiarelettere, 2013.

Elena Colombo, Movimenti giovanili: l’importanza di re-agire. Ecoansia e le sue conseguenze, in «AtmospheraLab»: Movimenti giovanili: l’importanza di re-agire | atmospheralab.com.

Marilynn B. Brewer, The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love or Outgroup Hate?, in «Journal of Social Issues», vol. 55, 1999, n. 3, pp. 429-444; https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00126.

Alessandro Ciampanelli

Graduated in Molecular Biology and Evolutionary Biology (UniPd), he is passionate about scientific essays.
He comes to Atmosphera Lab with the intention of putting himself to the test and writing about what has always moved his curiosity: the environment.