Alimentary Delinquency

Abstract

SynonymsArtiste provocateur; Food terrorism; Neophobia, visualculture; Pica; TabooIntroductionAlimentary delinquency, a termoriginally coined by French sociologist Pierre Aimez, will beused here to designate a wide range of eating practices that aregenerally considered by society at large as aberrant and asgoing beyond the normal, comprising a number of disturbedingestion practices that are widely considered as taboo and/orexcessive: ingestion of nonfood (nonnutritive) items or ofexcessive amounts of food, doing things with food that shouldnot be done, and forcing/duping people into eating somethingthey would not normally eat. Although evidence of alimentarydelinquency as described dates back to antiquity, it will bediscussed here as specific to the modern, contemporary period,as a symptom of ``gastro-anomy,'' a term coined by ClaudeFischler to describe the consequences on eating and food-makingpractices of the bio-cultural crisis experienced by moderneaters. Fischler and ...