Nutritional Socialization and its Relationship to Health in Algerian Society - A Socio-Anthropological Study

Abstract

Food in society’s life is linked to identities and also reflects individuals’ sense of belonging. For, nutrition is not merely a routine but a necessary act for survival and continuity repeated across time and space, nor simply a form of physical pleasure. Rather, it goes far beyond that, when it becomes strongly tied to the identity of a society, its cultural structure, and its socializing institutions. Moreover, we find that through the connection between what we consume in our daily lives and the identity dimension of nutrition in its broad sense. In this research, we relied on the collection of documented data and their analysis according to the comparative approach between the most important stages of change in the food system and health conditions in modern Algerian society, using the observation of daily experiences of events related to our object of study and research conducted at local and global levels in the field of nutrition and health. the health situation of a society can not be understood without reference to its food identity, which is shaped by traditions, customs, and cultural structures. This is approached through socio-anthropological research into people’s perceptions, Obesity, diabetes, and cancer are no longer individual problems, but have become social issues linked. the transformation of Algeria’s food identity which has led to a growing awareness of the need to move beyond mistaken practices inherited across generations, reinforced by the circumstances the society has gone through. Thus, an individual’s identity is determined by what they refrain from consuming for fear of illness, rather than necessarily by their dietary pattern itself. We are therefore facing a slow-paced transformation at the level of values and consumer habits, shaped by the resistance of inherited food traditions and their persistence in the face of the risks of openness to other identities.