Heathy Food: To Whom?

The aim of this conceptual study is to discuss the new dimensions incorporated into the contemporary concept of healthy food. The concept of the menu is used to define the set of guiding principles for the selection of foods. People still eat under the influence of the modern rational menu based on scientific principles and calculation and measurement elements and involve criteria designed to achieve specific goals – weight loss, physical or mental well-being, disease prevention, or health promotion. The guidelines of the moral menu, which recognises the ethical, political or environmental factors in food selection is growing in importance as well as the incorporation of socio-environmental and cultural dimensions to the concept of healthy food. This approach dialogues with the traditional menus, which based their combinations and rules for selecting foods on culture, daily practices and nature. The question “what is a healthy food today” must meet the challenging proposal of being healthy for everyone (and everything): for those who produce it, for those who eat it, for animals and plants, and for the environment. The experience of eating healthily promotes diverse social experiences and antagonistic feelings as freedom of choice, guilt, doubts and fear to eat. Given the large supply of food and diet guidelines and, consequently, the variety of choices that this supply represents to consumers, the food consumption pattern that individuals define as healthy can be considered to symbolise not only their identities but also what they wish other individuals will think of them, taking on peculiar forms of social distinction via eating.