Food sensitivities and bodily sedition: From vulnerability to a moral ideal?

Based on ethnographic interviews and observations of individuals who avoid gluten-containing foods, this article shows that food sensitivity is not a simple fact but instead the culmination of a self-optimization process in which the body’s vulnerability becomes a source of self-knowledge and self-enhancement. Based on minutely deciphered bodily “signs,” individuals contend that adopting a “free-from” diet enables them to embrace new forms of both ethics and practical insights. Food sensitivity is ultimately experienced as a language that gives voice to a conflictual relationship with contemporary society.