Food-Body Relationship

Synonyms

Diet; Embodiment; Nutrition

Introduction

Food circulates materially (in the digestive system, supermarkets, dinner tables, school, hospital, prison cafeterias, etc.) and symbolically (in TV shows, religious rituals, feasts, etc.) to produce our bodies as socially, politically, and physically constituted transitional entities. Eating habits are key to the interrelated constitution and practice of ethnic, racial, gender, and political identities. Food is equally important in the production of the cultural and social codes and norms that affect our bodies and our experience of self as physical beings. Food consumption involves time- and place-specific arrangements, and the body as corporeal space is sexed, built, and (re)designed through every day and lifelong practices of food and eating. Our bodies are a product of simultaneously social and physical interactions with food which transform according to changes in the life course, exchange relations, and environmental and other...