Edible Identity: The Expression of Ego
Have you ever heard the expression “you are what you eat”?
This expression comes from Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste¹. In his work, Brillat-Savarin highlights the connection between diet and physical and mental health. He explores how our choice of food has social, religious, and cultural significance, serving as a strong signal of identity and community. This idea was published in 1826 but it continues to influence society nearly 200 years later. Today’s consumers are now choosing what they eat to reflect the person they want to be, rather than allowing their food choices to speak first. Food is now one of the most powerful tools we can use to create and communicate our identity. These shifts in how we choose, consume, and share food come with major implications for marketers today.
To better understand how food is so important in identity, we need to extend the definition of the self beyond just the individual.
Identity Beyond the Self
Typically self identity consumption is explored through conspicuous consumption, the purchasing of luxury goods to showcase status². But how is self identity consumption changing now that consumers are spending less on luxury clothes and cars, and spending more on indulgent essentials, like food? Consumers are crafting their self identity through the foods they consume, especially when being shared socially.
The concept of identity extends beyond the self. Russel W. Belk explains in Possession and the Extended Self “that we regard our possessions as parts of ourselves”³. The self includes: body parts, psychological processes, personal characteristics, possessions, abstract ideas, other people, objects within the close physical environment, and distant physical environment. This means the concept of self identity is an amalgamation of our body, our thoughts, our character, our ideas, our friends, our family, our environment, and even our possessions. Further, Belk explains that we invest our self identity through objects³. That is, the self includes the body, the body produces labour, therefore what we produce from our labour is part of our self identity. In other words, we work for money and invest that money into the self through possessions - including the food we buy.
If possessions represent a part of who we are, then taste, the way we choose and display possessions, is the bridge between our identity and society.
Taste Signals Status
Food choices aren’t just about nourishment anymore, they have become a social marker. This is where taste, and the status that it communicates, comes in. Pierre Bourdieu, a prominent 20th century sociologist, posits that our taste in art, fashion, and cuisine are a function of our social status, our upbringing, our education, and our culture. Taste also determines our social status. Bourdieu states, “[c]onsumption is, in this case, a stage in a process of communication…”⁴. In other words, consuming is a way of communicating that you are a part of a particular group, that you share their knowledge and their taste.
In the world of CPG, this explains why certain consumers choose diet sodas over probiotic sodas. The choice of one or the other signals the type of person you are, or who you want to be. Diet soda drinkers are people looking for a sugar-free alternative to their favourite soda. Whereas, probiotic soda drinkers are looking for a tasty way to support their gut health. Food acts as a generational marker as well. Think avocado toast and millennials. You don’t hear the words avocado toast without thinking of millennials. In more traditional categories like wine, the choice between natural wine and conventional wine is a status cue. Natural wines, in comparison to traditional wines, are made with minimal intervention in the growing and manufacturing processes. Natural wine enthusiasts are seen by some traditional wine connoisseurs to drink anything with a natural label, rather than prioritize the terroir, the grape varietal, or the vintage.
The choice of soda at a convenience store, your brunch order, and your choice of wine at a restaurant all indicate where you want to fit into society. These choices were once only visible to the people in our vicinity. Now the selection of morning smoothie or midnight snack are being shared online, expanding the frequency and the reach of the choice.
Online Identity
“[I]t does appear that we now do a large amount of our identity work online.”⁵ - Russell W. Belk
What Belk discovered about possessions and Bourdieu established about taste as identity signals are now amplified online. Today, we can share anything and everything we want on social media. We share even the most mundane experiences as a way to show our identity. Belk states “[w]e have considerable leeway in our visual self presentations online…”⁵. We have the freedom to curate our online image by selecting what we post. With social media, individuals choose to share (or not to share) food choices to craft the personality they want to be.
We go online to share what we are eating but also to watch what other people are eating. Take “what I eat in a day” videos for example. Food choices are inescapably quotidian: everyone makes them every single day. This type of media is highly aspirational. The highest viewed videos are rarely the average person choosing to eat the only overripe banana left from the week’s groceries for breakfast. It is most often a theatrical recount of the acai smoothie bowl made fresh that morning, and the various beverages consumed to hydrate, caffeinate, and supplement. In this way, food shifts from daily necessity to curated performance.
We’ve shifted from having our daily food choices influence the perception of people in close proximity to intentionally sharing these decisions with a much larger audience in order to create the person we want to be. And these shifts have significant implications for marketers today.
Why does this matter?
Marketers are already aware of self-identity consumption. But it’s becoming more important now because Gen Z, a generation that is chronically online and deeply cares about social and environmental issues, is growing in purchasing power. “With two billion people, Gen Z is projected to be the largest—and the first truly digitally native—generation ever. In just five years, they will overtake Boomers in global annual spending, projected to total $12 trillion”⁶. As Gen Z becomes the dominant generation in terms of spending, marketers will need to adapt and incorporate identity into their brand messaging.
For brands, the question isn’t necessarily whether your product tastes good: it’s whether your product helps consumers project the identity they aspire to.
Sources:
1: Brillat-Savarin, J. A. (1826). Physiologie du goût, ou méditations de gastronomie transcendante.
2: Veblen, T. (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class.
3: Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the Extended Self. Journal of Consumer Research.
4: Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
5: Belk, R. W. (2013). Extended Self in a Digital World. Journal of Consumer Research.
6: Nielsen. (2025). Connecting with Gen Z: The demographic science behind effective marketing. https://nielseniq.com/global/en/insights/analysis/2025/connecting-with-gen-z/
