The New Morality of Food

April 21, 2010

As a nation we are increasingly aware of—and concerned with—where our food comes from and how our food habits affect public health and the environment. Food, in other words, has increasingly acquired a moral dimension, something that involves obligations, ideals, and even felt personal guilt. Mary Eberstadt argues that our new morality of food has replaced other moral frameworks, including the old morality of sex, and that “the norms society imposes on itself in pursuit of its own self-protection do not wholly disappear, but rather mutate and move on, sometimes in curious guises.”