Between consumer practices and values: the factors of change in food consumer habits during the lockdown in Italy

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic generated a global emergency that represented a health crisis of unprecedented proportions. Drastic measures to contain the contagion, such as the lockdown, demanded the review of the habits of daily life of both individuals and communities. The whole range of daily food-related practices especially underwent significant changes by both exacerbating, and normalising a polarization of extremes in people’s ways of living, acting, thinking, and feeling. Aware that consumer practices, especially eating, are 'the locus of the social', the research findings in this paper investigated changes that occurred in food habits during the two months of the first lockdown in Italy. The data emerging from a both explorative and confirmative factorial analysis show that five main latent dimensions determined the most significant changes in eating practices during the lockdown. Among them, a significant role is played by family structure as well as by more value-based, motivational factors conjured up into “mindful” pattrens of aware and sustainable consumption. For sociological research in consumption this means to reconsider the weight of values guiding consumer choices when investigating the sphere of food-related practices.