Paper long abstract:

In contemporary society, characterized by the spread of contradictory discourses around food, by alimentary hyper-reflexivity and by the gradual individualization of food choices and the risks related to them, food is increasingly becoming a means of personal (e.g. nutritionism, scientific and spontaneous dietaries, eating disorders, consumption of industrial organic products) and global (alternative modalities of production and consumption) identity crisis management, as well as a tool that allows the construction of new subjectivities, forms of belonging and planning, and of specific worldviews.

The paper critically examines some of the hegemonic discursive forms (nutritionist rhetoricals, advertising narratives, techniques of food traceability and labeling, certification, speeches which promote alternative food production and consumption) that determine those food choices and consumption practices through which individuals try to create a certain model of self and the world. Food may be considered as a "technology of the self" and alimentary practices may be considered as strategies, creative modes of resistance and subversion of institutionalized structures of power.