ABSTRACT
Western countries are coping with a paradoxical situation regarding food. While one might suppose that an abundance of food would have brought serenity to a great majority of people, the relationship with food remains characterised by anxiety which is linked with several issues. First, a medicalisation process (Lupton 1995), that results from both scientific advances and increase in individual responsibility (Crawford 1977), has emphasised the nutritional dimension of food. As a consequence, nutritional safeguards have increased, but the effects may be counter-productive as they induce “dietary cacophony” (Fischler 1993). Then, a second paradox in food modernity results from the first one: although food has never been as safe as it is today, at least from the sanitary point of view, people are afraid of what they eat (Apfelbaum 1998), and especially of its possible impact on health, body and identity. French sociologist Claude Fischler (1993) has underlined the symbolic risks of incorporating ‘Unidentified Food Objects’ (UFOs). Lastly, globalisation is supposed to involve the homogenisation process of food which may reduce identity markers (Ritzer 2004).
