CHAPTER 1 EATING IN THE AGE OF FOOD TRANSITION: BETWEEN FREEDOMS AND CONSTRAINTS

Abstract

In light of the increasing number and complexity of food products on offer to meet the challenges of the food transition, this article looks at the consequences for consumers’ freedom of choice. This freedom of choice cannot be based on total autonomy, which generally leads to a loss of dietary reference points and guilt, or on radical heteronomy dictated by science or hygienic-ecological rationalities, which create tensions and divisions in society. Rather, dietary freedom is an effort to free oneself from the burden of a criterion-based vision of food. It calls for the restoration of an ethic of eating together, based on values and rules capable of preserving common goods and the well-being and survival of our fellow human beings.