In most (if not all) human societies, turning down food offered amounts to rejecting the relationship, pulling out of the circle of guests and the group. It indicates distrust and may prompt exclusion. In today’s world, however, a large and apparently growing number of people are asserting personal dietary requirements for a variety of reasons: medical (allergies and intolerance); health and weight (various diets and regimens); ethical, political and spiritual (vegetarianism, veganism, religious restrictions). Does the sudden assertion of these individual demands indicate an evolution or even a rejection of what can be considered the bedrock of sociability: the sharing of meals?

The issue of selective eating is explored here from a wide interdisciplinary perspective: from a biomedical standpoint (immunology, allergies and intolerances) to social and historical analyses. The rise of personal dietary requirements poses questions as to the scope and limits to individualization in contemporary societies. This book (and the conference that gave rise to it) triggered a debate in the French media: Will the trend lead to the end of eating as a social, shared activity? Will we abandon all forms of commensal eating? Or will novel configurations emerge, flexible enough but also ritualized enough so that the experience of eating retains a sense of conviviality?

Claude Fischler is Senior Investigator Emeritus with CNRS, the French national research agency. He is the author of pioneering work in the field of food studies.
Véronique Pardo is an anthropologist and heads OCHA.

OCHA is a research institute within the French dairy council and a resource center for sharing research with the academic community. Since 1992, it has been analyzing food habits and the relationships people (as eaters, consumers and citizens) have with their food (www.lemangeur-ocha.com). 

1. Couverture
2. Titre
3. Copyright
4. OCHA
5. Introduction - Is Sharing Meals a Thing of the Past?
   1. Demands or Compromises
   2. Giving, Hospitality, Sharing
   3. Sharing and Commensality
   4. Individualization, Autonomization
   5. Intercultural Variability: The Multifaceted “West”
   6. Allergies, Intolerance, Diets: Multiple-Entry Objects
   7. Knowing What You Eat
   8. Alienation and Reappropriation
6. I - FOOD ALLERGIES AND INTOLERANCE: THE SCIENTIFIC ENIGMA, DIMENSIONS OF THE PROBLEM AND ITS SOCIOCULTURAL ASPECTS
   1. Chapter 1 - Diet and Food Allergy: Truth, Error, Ignorance and Myth
      1. Food Allergies Affect 3.4% of the Population in France
      2. Food Allergies: Diversity and Diet
      3. The Term Intolerance Applies to Many Food Categories
      4. The Possibility of Food Hypersensitivity in Certain Illnesses Is a Widespread Belief
      5. Conclusions
   2. Chapter 2 - Food Allergy, a Complex Disease at The Intersection of Genes, Environment and Development
      1. The Hygiene Hypothesis
      2. Genes Also Have a Say
      3. The Unknown Prevalence of Food Allergy
      4. Conclusions
   3. Chapter 3 - Food Intolerance and Allergies: A Social-historical Perspective?
      1. Allergies and Food Intolerance: A Strange Ailment
      2. Allergies, Diets and Commensality
      3. Allergies and Assertion of Identity
   4. Chapter 4 - Lactose Intolerance: Problem or Illness?
      1. Lactase activity in question
      2. Treatment
   5. Chapter 5 - Individualizing Children’s Diets and Food Allergy
      1. Introduction
      2. Prevalence of Food Allergy in Children
      3. Reasons for Increased Prevalence of Food Allergy
      4. The Social Status of Food Allergy
      5. The Political Economy of Food Allergy
      6. The School Lunch in Australia
      7. Framing Food
      8. Conclusions
7. II - SELECTIVE DIETS AND ETHICAL, POLITICAL AND HEALTH JUSTIFICATIONS
   1. Chapter 6 - The “Prehistoric Diet” Myths and Scientific Realities
      1. “Prehistoric Peoples”
      2. How Can We Know What Food Prehistoric People Ate?
      3. Diets of “Prehistoric Peoples” in Northwestern Eurasia
      4. Conclusion
   2. Chapter 7 - Individualized Practices and the History of Diets
      1. Medieval Categories and Diets
      2. Advice for Living a Long Life in the Renaissance: A Change?
      3. From Classicism to the 19th Century: An Invention
      4. Individualization and Its Limits Today
   3. Chapter 8 - A Human Paradox: Self-Destruction through Self-Deprivation as Self-Affirmation. - Adolescent Eating Disorders
      1. Human Specificity: Reflexive Self-Awareness
      2. Emotions: A Potential Internal Threat
      3. Self-Destruction: An Ever Possible Reaction to Powerlessness
8. III - RESTRICTIVE DIETS AND NORMS OF THINNESS
   1. Chapter 9 - The Dark Side of Diets: Reason and Folly
      1. Diets: Method or Fad?
      2. From Diets to the Diet System
      3. Errors in Approach
      4. The Pathological Context
      5. From BMI to Ideal Weight
      6. The Nutritional Consequences of Diets
      7. Undesirable Effects of Diets
      8. Eating Disorders
      9. Metabolic Consequences
      10. Weight Regain
      11. Ethical and Philosophical Approach
      12. Fears and Illusions
      13. Medical Discourse
      14. Dealing with Failure
      15. Social and Psychological Consequences
      16. Nutrition, a Simple and yet Complex Act
      17. Conclusion
   2. Chapter 10 - When Healthful Eating Becomes an Obsession
      1. Grasping the Phenomenon
      2. Orthorexia: Between Inclusion and Exclusion in Society
      3. The Search for an Identity: The Activist and the Invalid
      4. A Spiritual Quest, or “Kitchen Spirituality”
      5. Purification, Lightness and Transparency
      6. The Return to Balance
   3. Chapter 11 - From Feasting as Overindulgence to Obesity as Sin
      1. Overindulgence, Madness and Diet
      2. Excess: Political and Historic Dimensions
      3. The Origin of Diets
      4. The Origin of Sin. Distinction between the Medical and Legal Realms
      5. Political Prescription of the Proper Dietary Regimen: regimen sanitatis
      6. The Triumph and Crisis of the Hegemony of Medical Rationality
      7. The Link between Culture and Medicine
   4. Chapter 12 - The Constraints of Birth on Personal Food Choices in Ancien Régime France (16th-18th Centuries)
      1. To Each According to His Birth
      2. Three Food Transgressions
      3. The Paradox of French Table Service: An Abundance of Dishes and Limited Choice for Guests
9. IV - CONVIVIALITY, COMMENSALITY AND INDIVIDUALISMS
   1. Chapter 13 - “Trying Everything”: Food Socialization and Table Manners - A Survey of Families in the Pays-de-la-Loire (France)
      1. Children “Who Try Everything” Versus Children “Who Try Nothing”
   2. Chapter 14 - Fear of Food in Modern America: From Collective to Individual Solutions
      1. Worry and Suspicion in the Early 20th Century: Science Generates Fear
      2. The Golden Age of Food Processing
      3. Faith in Government and Consumer Protection
      4. The Negative Nutrition Paradigm
   3. Chapter 15 - Food Neophobia as a Source of Personal Dietary Requirements: Causes and Consequences
      1. To Combat Food Neophobia: “Exposure, Exposure, Exposure”
      2. Food Choices as an Expression of Values
   4. Chapter 16 - Toward Customized Diets? Personal Dietary Regimens and Collective Habits
      1. Everyone on the Same Diet or One Diet for All?
      2. The Problematization of the Relationship to Food
      3. The Need for a New Governance Model?
      4. Diets and Dietary Isolation
      5. Toward New Forms of Meal Sharing?
   5. Chapter 17 - The Affirmation of Personal Dietary Requirements and Changes in Eating Models
      1. The Heritagization of Food and the Gastronomization of Rural Cuisine
      2. Politicization
      3. Judicialization
      4. Animal Welfare
      5. The Rise of Environmental Concerns
      6. Medicalization and Nutritionalization
10. Table