On Interpreting Something as Food

In this paper we discuss the role that individual and collective acts of interpretation play inshaping a metaphysics of food. Our analysis moves from David Kaplan’s recent conten-tion that food is always open to interpretation, and substantially expands its theoreticalunderpinnings by drawing on recent scholarship on food and social ontology. Aftersetting up the terms of the discussion (§1), we suggest (§2) that the contention can beread subjectively or structurally, and that the latter can be given three sub-readings. Wethen lay out (§3) three case studies that, we submit, any viable theory of a metaphysics offood should be able to account for. We show that one structural reading—based on theidea of negotiation—swiftly accommodates for the three case studies. We thus concludethat this reading is most promising for charting a metaphysics of food.