Food as a lifestyle choice: trends at a glance

As predicted by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (“Liquid Life”, 2008), people today are increasingly convinced that complete self-realization requires doing away with rules and restrictions.

Society is beginning to look more and more “liquid”, with more people behaving like free-floating molecules, no longer tied up in mass models, able to easily change their convictions, opinions and choices. When it comes to food too, young people and women in particular feel increasingly free and oriented toward experimenting, proving once again that these groups are the most dynamic components in our society.
The most salient characteristic of the liquidity of Italian food consumer habits is an orientation toward consumption lifestyles far from tradition and local flavor, which on the contrary converge with the values of health and wellbeing. This is probably precisely because, in addition to responding in the moment to basic physical and sense needs, they are also an expression of freeing oneself from common schemes and behavioral “cages”.

Here’s a list of the main trends in which health-oriented lifestyles can be categorized.
• Organic products continue to grow at double digits. They are good, good for you and more sustainable for the environment and for animals. This category is also fast encroaching on personal hygiene and domestic products, clothing and textiles for décor.
• At the same time, foods for restrictive diets are also growing: those allowing no meat, but also other things. In Italy, one out of every ten people is a vegetarian (eating no meat or fish), and one out of every fifty is vegan (eating no animal products). This trend puts Italians first in Europe, and mainly affects the Northwest of the country (36%), large cities (13%), those in management-level jobs (25%) and women (58%), especially between 45 and 54 (28%) and degree holders (17%). These trends tend toward extremes, giving rise to emergent phenomena verging on fundamentalism.
• fruitarians eat only fruits and vegetables, excluding from their diet not only animal products but also every other part of the plant.
• raw foodists, as the name makes clear, eat only raw foods that have not been processed or cooked at temperatures above 50 °C;
• reducetarians only eat animal products on the weekend, or one day per week;
• pescetarians and pollotarians eat no animal products excepting fish or chicken;
• those who subscribe to a macrobiotic diet believe that, in order to reach physical wellbeing, it’s necessary to maintain a strict balance in daily consumption (50% of calories from grains, 20-30% from raw or cooked vegetables, 10-20% from white meat, fish, legumes or substitutes and 10% from fresh or dried fruit);            
• locavores opt for local foods, produced and processed within about 200 km of their home;
• the paleolithic diet is based on the habits of our prehistoric ancestors, allowing only foods that can be obtained through hunting, fishing or gathering (roots, berries, vegetables and fruit, preferably fresh;
• finally, there are the Breatharians, who according to the official definition, eat nothing and nourish themselves solely on air and sunlight. But according to the authors of a COOP report, this is a topic for an entirely different discussion…

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