Although the topic of food has rarely been a major issue in classical sociology, the discipline has engaged with it from its very beginnings, from two principal perspectives: as an expression of inequalities and as a catalyst for social cohesion.

On one hand, sociology has highlighted the role of food as a primary instrument of stratification. Marx identified it as a central commodity in the capitalist mode of production, a good differentiated access to which reflects and reproduces class inequality, alienating producers from the fruits of their labour. On this basis, Veblen developed the concept of “conspicuous consumption”, in which rare and expensive foods become symbolic means by which the leisure class may exhibit its status and its distance from mere necessity. Weber refined this perspective by linking dietary practices to lifestyle, a cultural marker that defines and maintains the boundaries between different social strata. In these readings, the table is an arena at which hierarchies are asserted and rendered visible.

On the other hand, food has been explored as an agent of integration. For Durkheim, the shared meal is not merely an act of nourishment but a ritual that reinforces bonds and reaffirms group identity. Food rules and taboos serve to demarcate the sacred boundaries of the community. Simmel, with his concept of “sociability”, interpreted the meal as the paradigmatic form of social interaction, in which food acts as a catalyst for a union that transcends its material content. In this perspective, eating together is one of the founding acts of society itself.

The decisive turning point in an analysis of the relationship between food and class came with Bourdieu.Footnote ¹ In his work food becomes one of the key terrains for observing the reproduction of social hierarchies through taste. It is no longer only a matter of what should be purchased, but of how it is chosen. The fundamental opposition is articulated in terms of the “luxury taste” of the dominant classes, where value lies in aesthetics or form, for example, in the lightness of a mousse rather than the substance of a roast; and the “taste of necessity” of the popular classes, oriented towards functional, abundant and nourishing foods. Taste is not only, or even primarily, an individual preference but rather class made flesh, a system of embodied dispositions that naturalizes inequality, transforming social privilege into a supposed superiority of the palate.

Subsequently, Peterson,Footnote ² with his thesis of omnivorousness, identified the key strategy of distinction not in exclusive snobbery but in the ability to navigate and selectively appreciate a wide range of possibilities. Value no longer resides solely in the consumption of haute cuisine, but in the capacity to find the authenticity in a street taco, to appreciate the exoticism of rare spices, and to competently discuss craft beers.

This figure of the competent omnivore paved the way for the most recent phase of the debate, shaped by its neoliberal context. Social distinction has moved away from simple ostentation to embrace the more powerful language of morality. Contemporary dietary practices among the middle and upper classes are no longer governed solely by an aesthetics of distinction, but by a complex system of ethical imperatives. Health translates into the choice of organic and “natural” foods; environmental sustainability requires the consumption of local and seasonal products and a reduction in meat; authenticity is manifested in the search for small-scale producers; and “care” is measured in the hours devoted to preparing a “home-made” meal. These have become the new, and perhaps most powerful, forms of symbolic capital.

In this context, food choice also becomes a performance of virtue. To be a conscious, reflective and responsible consumer is the new frontier of distinction. But how, then, are class boundaries being reconfigured today, if privilege is no longer expressed through opulence but through effort, knowledge and self-discipline? In what ways does the ideology of individual choice mask the persistent structural inequalities that render these new food virtues accessible only to some?

Two recent empirical works, Distinctions alimentaires by Faustine Régnier and Feeding the Middle Classes by Kate Gibson, offer particularly compelling contributions from this perspective. Although rooted in different national contexts—France and the United Kingdom, respectively—the two converge in showing how food represents a key arena in which contemporary social hierarchies are contested and legitimized.

Faustine Régnier’s work provides a broad macro-sociological and relational analysis of French society, using food as a probe with which to map fractures, inequalities and growing tensions across different social groups. Based on more than 15 years of research, the book analyses how dominant food norms—whether nutritional (such as those promoted by public health campaigns), environmental (local and seasonal consumption) or corporeal (the ideal of thinness)—are perceived and enacted in radically different ways, depending on one’s position in the social structure. Her analysis reveals clear stratification. At the top, the affluent classes integrate these norms with ease, interiorizing them to the point of transforming them into a veritable “food morality” based on duty, effort and self-discipline. For them, “eating well” is an ethical imperative, a sign of personal excellence. At the base of the social pyramid, the popular classes express critical distance or outright rejection: they perceive these norms as alien, unattainable for economic reasons, and, above all, as yet another form of constraint on lives already marked by limitations. In the middle, the intermediate classes display “hyper-adherence”, an anxious desire to conform which, clashing with limited resources, produces “food malaise” and a sense of guilt, reflecting their social insecurity and fear of downward mobility. Régnier’s boldest theoretical contribution is the proposal of an inversion of Bourdieu’s model: the affluent classes, despite their economic freedom, are now subject to a “taste of necessity” dictated by moral imperatives. Conversely, the popular classes, despite their economic constraints, express and claim a “taste of freedom”, finding in the rejection of food norms one of the last spaces in which they can assert their autonomy and pleasure. The ultimate diagnosis is that of social polarization: instead of vertical imitation of tastes, we are witnessing a progressive divergence between groups, with food becoming today a site of symbolic and political struggle.

While Régnier provides a panoramic map, Kate Gibson offers a micro-sociological and focused analysis, zooming in to the domestic practices of the British middle class. Through an ethnography conducted in the kitchens of her participants, she explores the mechanisms through which this sector reproduces and normalizes its privilege. The central analytical concept is the performance of identity through the creation and display of “culinary capital”. In an era that celebrates individualism, the middle class constructs its identity not by explicitly declaring its belonging, but by performing a series of practices that distinguish it from an imagined and homogenized “other”, namely the working class, framed as comprising passive and uncritical consumers. This includes the valorization of the “homemade” as tangible proof of care, commitment and authenticity. It also encompasses the strategic navigation of the market, combining the search for “authentic” products in specialist shops with the practices of the “savvy shopper” in discount stores, demonstrating competence and control rather than necessity. It involves the moralized rejection of ready-made and processed foods, seen as symbols of passivity and lack of care, whose occasional consumption must be confessed and justified. Finally, it involves the intergenerational transmission of a taste for selective diversity, teaching children not only how to eat but how to become critical and conscious consumers. The conclusion is that of a dominant class that has been extraordinarily effective in masking its privilege: class practices are presented as the outcome of individual choices and merit, thereby rendering inequality invisible and, in effect, legitimizing it.

Considered together, the works of Régnier and Gibson, despite their evident differences in scale and focus, offer a strikingly convergent diagnosis of the function of food in contemporary Western society. They represent two sides of the same coin, illuminating different aspects of a single phenomenon: the reconfiguration of social hierarchies in the neoliberal era. Their fundamental convergence lies in having identified morality as the new language of class distinction. Whether it be the “food morality” described by Régnier or the investment in “care” and “effort” analysed by Gibson, the outcome is similar: class privilege is translated into ethical superiority. “Eating well” no longer means merely having good taste, but being a better person. Both also show how this moral identity is constructed through opposition. Régnier demonstrates this by highlighting the polarization of tastes across groups, while Gibson describes the process of othering through which the middle class defines its reflexive identity in contrast to a passive and imagined mass consumer. Finally, both unmask the ideology of individual choice, showing how the capacity for “making the right choices” is itself unequally distributed as a resource.

There are also evident differences between the two texts, however. The most obvious, as already noted, is scale. Régnier offers a map of inter-class relations at the national level, highlighting fractures that traverse the whole of society, while Gibson provides an ethnography of the internal mechanisms of a single group. Consequently, the dynamics analysed differ. Régnier studies how different groups respond to external norms, while Gibson shows how the middle class actively creates meaning. This is also reflected in their dialogue with Bourdieu. Régnier proposes a kind of inversion of his model, whereas Gibson offers rather an update. Their conclusions therefore provide two complementary diagnoses. Régnier describes a society manifesting fragmentation and polarization, whereas Gibson describes the resilience of class power and its capacity to normalize privilege. Together, they paint a powerful picture of how, in the 21st century, social inequality is cooked, served and consumed every day.

Along these lines, the works of Régnier and Gibson, despite their originality, also enter into dialogue—explicitly or implicitly, depending on the case—with the wider literature on the relationship between food and social stratification. Their analyses do not emerge from a theoretical void, but rather take root in a fertile field of research that, over the past two decades, has progressively shifted attention away from purely economic inequalities to the cultural and moral mechanisms through which class is experienced, performed and reproduced in everyday food practices.

The family is well established in sociological research as the crucible in which class distinctions are forged and transmitted. Studies have shown how family food practices are a powerful instrument for shaping social differencesFootnote ³ and how middle-class parents actively seek to orient the tastes of their adolescent children in a clear process of intergenerational transmission of specific cultural capital.Footnote ⁴ This process of socialization manifests itself at the micro level also in language: family table conversations differ radically across classes, with the dialogues of affluent families focusing on quality and health, while those of low-income families revolve around price and accessibility.Footnote ⁵

But the literature is increasingly documenting a moral turn with regard to food distinction. The discourse around foods considered healthy and virtuous—organic, wholegrain, local—is no longer merely a matter of health, but also a way of discursively redefining middle-class identity.Footnote ⁶ This identity performance is also tied to specific gendered practices: home cooking, for instance, has become a measure of maternal adequacy, a tangible demonstration of care, commitment and authenticity.Footnote ⁷ The moral dimension also extends to the body, linking class, food and bodily ideals, such as thinness,Footnote ⁸ itself now an important marker of distinction. Food is therefore invested with both ethical and aesthetic significance, and the intersection of these two domains has become the real terrain of distinction for the upper classes.Footnote ⁹

These moral performances, however, do not occur in a vacuum, but are defined in opposition to an “other”. On one hand, research continues to emphasize the weight of material constraints—income and prices—that render dominant norms simply inaccessible to part of the population, thereby grounding symbolic dynamics on a concrete economic base. On the other hand, several studies have explored the specific cultural repertoires of the popular classes, showing that their preferences are not mere absences but follow their own logics, rooted in familiarity and practicality.Footnote ¹⁰ It is precisely in contrast to this “other” consumer, often imagined as passive and uncritical, that the middle class constructs its reflexive identity.

The works of Régnier and Gibson, while confirming and deepening these tendencies, also offer innovative theoretical and analytical contributions, in particular by theorizing morality as the new driving force of contemporary food distinction. Régnier, with her analytical framework centred on the “reception of norms”, shifts the focus from consumption practices themselves to the interaction between citizens and the institutions (State, health agencies, mass media) that promote moral food models. Food thus also becomes a political arena in which relations with authority are negotiated. Her most radical proposal, the inversion of Bourdieu’s model, provides a powerful explanatory tool for the present: the idea that the affluent classes are now bound by a “taste of necessity” (moral and ecological), while the popular classes claim a “taste of freedom” (from control and moralization), offers a lens through which to interpret popular resistance not as ignorance or failure, but as a form of political autonomy and a defence of an ethics of pleasure and conviviality against an ethics of effort and restriction.

Gibson, meanwhile, brings us into the home to show how the foundations of privilege are constructed, revealing the everyday and performative mechanisms through which the middle class reproduces itself. She thus introduces powerful analytical concepts such as “culinary capital”, which goes beyond Bourdieu’s generic “cultural capital” to specify the competencies required today: the ability to navigate the market, decode authenticity and master cooking techniques that signal “care” and “effort”. Through the concept of “domestication”, she highlights the often invisible and feminized labour required to transform an anonymous market commodity into a symbol laden with familial and class significance. But perhaps her most brilliant insight is to identify the performance of individualism as the quintessential class strategy. In showing how her respondents reject the label of “middle class” in order to present themselves as unique and reflective individuals, Gibson exposes the central paradox of contemporary distinction. The most effective way to signal one’s class belonging is to deny it, attributing privileged practices to personal choice, taste and merit.

Taken together, Régnier and Gibson thus go beyond the simple statement that “class matters” to explain how and why it matters in a world that claims to be post-class, showing that food is no longer merely a battlefield for status but has become a fundamental language through which a new morality of inequality is articulated, masked as individual virtue.