Los debates actuales en la Sociología de la alimentación

Abstract

The characteristic social changes in the modern age have also reached food. The choice of what food to eat or not to eat has become more complex. Our options have increased, making the process of choice more complicated, and the agencies generating rules or regulations are not offering us unmistakable guidelines, but they are rather offering a wide range of very complex options about how to eat well. Food choice is getting more and more difficult and it requires us to have clear consumption criteria in order to be able to make decisions on what is good to eat. That is the general framework on which the sociology of food is being discussed nowadays. For some sociologists the tendency is going towards a setback in food behaviour and a loss of rule referents about what a good intake is. On the other hand, others think that the lack of food structuring is notso evident, since the social rules of referent groups are still present. These social rules help to make decisions about food consumption that meet the dietary norm. Apart from this debate on the consequences of the modern age on food, in the field of Social Studies there has been an increasing call for a holistic approach to the agrifood system. This is a proposal to try to overcome the traditional breach between the field of production and the field of consumption.