From food to taste, from taste to food. Building a parable in young people’s taste perception to “relish” the future

Food enfaces multiple facets (culture, identity, relations, nourishment and so on) embedding those ones of perception and savouring flavours. These latter ones are already objects in several analyses, but the urgency for a deeper knowledge of the relationship with the origin territories and consumption places constitutes the focus for additional fields of analysis. The origin territories of food and their preparation as the places and situations of consumption belong with constitutional characteristics in value, relationships and links to food. These are components of the unicity for these values, relationships and connections with food also. Early gastrophysics research has its interest area in factors that are able to have a certain multisensorial impact on savouring food and beverage. Multifactor analysis arouses analogy with spatial dialectics (the environment “into” consuming) as in the nourishment dialectics (mainly close to food) as a trigger for the dialogue among landscape, agriculture, food, education and any other element that involves the phenomenology of the taste. Current trends indicate actions to raise awareness and relevance from the nutritional point of view and impact in the individual dimension, but also in the relational dimension starting from the culture of the territory and being together. Data about young people’s nourishment habits show the main character of a low variety in kinds of food that are also made up of non-seasonal ingredients, with highly processed foods and low nutritional values. The paper, through a survey of a sample of students from all levels of education up to university, at the beginning investigates their food preferences, tastes, and related habits, up to real experiences of traditional local foods, in order to trace a path of the components in their taste experience and overturn eating habits.