Adolescents' Food Communication in Social Media

Background

The social nature of food and food practices - that is, the idea that food is a way to interact and connect with others - is crucial to promoting health. To better understand food and its complex relationship with social media, we need to consider how diets and food habits connect people culturally. While food and nutrients are necessary for human survival, they also function as important objects in culture and as rich sources for metaphor (Korthals, 2008). Some sociologists even aver that food is a total social fact (Mauss, 1967). The cultural dimension of food practices has been termed the “omnivore’s dilemma” (Korthals, 2008) or “omnivore’s paradox” (Fischler, 1988), based on the assumption that humans can eat a wide variety of things. Unlike specialized eaters, omnivores such as humans can thrive on a multitude of diets and lack inherent predilections for foods that are healthy. Culture thus becomes a primary factor that dictates human eating behaviors, which suggests that the social meaning and metaphors of food can affect food choices and implicate which types of food confer social acceptance.