¨"Fitters ¨", "paleo" ¨ and "veggies" ¨: New ways to classify the edible products

Abstract

Diets are a combination of habit and lifestyle related to practices of consumption and socioeconomic conditions, to people’s choices and their tastes. Human societies follow diets not only to keep biological life but also to display social relationships and to make culturally symbolic declarations. People’s food choices allow us to think about the relations, connections, and/or contradictions within social classes, taxonomies, and classification systems in contemporary society, which overcome local particularisms and include global trends. For this article I have decided to work with social groups that adopt and follow three different diets based on their distinct worldviews: fitness, paleolithic, and vegetarianism, in order to comprehend their systems of social classification and morality. My aim is to consider the ways in which these three groups perceive the edible products, how they arrange foods as such, why there are “limitations” for each group, and the relationships that can be established by people’s consumption habits, social class, particular sports practices, and food choices and classifications.