Offsetting Risk: Organic Food, Pollution, and the Transgression of Spatial Boundaries

This article analyses the reasons given by some inhabitants of Palermo, a city in southern Italy, to explain their consumption of organic foods. It does so to uncover the role played by perceptions of the ubiquity of pollution in the construction of contemporary culinary anxieties. The article shows that some Palermitans compared organic to conventional foods on the basis of notions of healthiness, choosing the former to avoid ingesting harmful substances. This is in line with a popular interpretation of organic food consumption as a means to avoid risks originating in agriculture and the food processing industry. However, concerns about food quality were not the sole motivation offered by research participants. Eating organics was also seen as a way to mitigate risks deriving from the local urban environment. While this double risk burden reflects views of pollution that are typical of contemporary environmental discourse, participants’ references to urban settings in their discussions of organic food are an aspect that is not usually addressed in analyses of this form of consumption. The article suggests therefore that ideas about the spatial properties of pollution play an important role in explaining people's culinary anxieties and the attractiveness of organics, the consumption of which is seen as capable of offsetting contamination from a diverse array of (mostly local) factors.