Food choice: beyond the chemical content

How are food choices formulated? Which are the factors that mostly affect food choice? These questions are crucially important both for efforts in food innovation and for institutions that face consequences and costs of diets that are harmful to human health and to the environment. On these matters, several reports have been developed following the angel of various disciplines, focusing on the analysis of the factors affecting food choices. Large-scale research on consumption behaviours has neither stopped the growing number of unsuccessful products entering the market, nor provided adequate support for institutions that are taking elaborate actions towards promoting health-orientated behaviours. These preliminary remarks highlight the need to think about the approaches and categories with which research programmes on food choices should be updated. This article discusses the reasons why food choices are determined by beliefs and identity, are conditioned by social images that influence preferences by indicating to individuals what foods are ‘good’ and ‘right’; belong to the field of individual choice, and therefore, cannot be assimilated into medical prescriptions or merely reduced to a question of rules. Taste involves beliefs and identity as well as perceptions. This is why it has to be analyzed as a cultural and relational object. This paper aims to explore the complex mix of influences on food choice stressing that food choice is a matter of identity.