In this article, I investigate the logic underlying household food consumption in Portugal and how it relates to class positioning, like other expressions of culture. Therefore, the paper examines the Bourdieusian hypothesis of homology between the field of food and the configuration of social positions in Portuguese society against the hypotheses that emphasise homogenisation and individualisation of consumption patterns. I start by remapping the Portuguese social space, using an approach inspired by the analysis pioneered by Bourdieu on Distinction and recently taken up by several streams of research. Drawing on the national Household Budget Survey, I then develop a Correspondence Analysis of expenditure on a wide range of foodstuffs. The analysis is supplemented by data from the Second Large Survey on Sustainability in Portugal, seeking to examine patterns in ethical dispositions concerning food and drink in contemporary Portugal and their homology with class. Concluding on a degree of similarity between the space of food consumption and the space of social positions engendered by differences in the overall volume and composition of capital, I close with reflections on the methodological challenges of this approach and on the broader significance of these results for our understanding of consumption in Portugal.

Food and eating are critical sites for analysing everyday life and social change. Amid growing concerns about health, sustainability and neoliberal pressures for individual responsibility, there is increasing pressure to reshape how individuals relate to food. This study addresses the evolution of food practices across the life course, examining how social class and trajectories shape food-related habits. Drawing on a Bourdieusian relational phenomenology, the research explores how individuals adapt their food practices in response to evolving social contexts. Using life history interviews and ethnographic accounts, the research shows that while early familial socialisation establishes foundational food repertoires, key life transitions and experiences of social mobility often prompt a re-evaluation of food practices. Upwardly mobile individuals often frame dietary changes as projects of self-reinvention, leveraging cultural capital to align with health-conscious or cosmopolitan norms, whereas working-class participants emphasise pragmatic adjustment to constraints and expectations. The findings challenge deterministic readings of Bourdieu, while demonstrating that practices are dynamically reshaped through accumulated knowledge and reflexive engagement. Crucially, narratives of change are themselves classed, reflecting inequalities in symbolic mastery. The study underscores how food practices both reproduce and occasionally contest social inequalities through the enduring influence of class trajectory. It further argues that even though institutional interventions are more effective in promoting socially desirable change, they often carry symbolic violence.