Well-being Shift through Healthy Eating. From Organic Consumption to a Paradigm of Alternative Local Development

Starting from the fact of the crisis of the current model of development, this work aims to propose an interpretive framework to the possibilities of alternative social development based on "critical consumption" and its ability to stimulate social capital, civic engagement and the shared responsibility. The assumption is the relationship and collaboration between consumers, between consumers and producers, as well as among all the other social stakeholders of the local context (businesses, government and associations). Thanks to the example of the alternative organic food supply chain (the socalled Alternative Food Networks), the authors examine the way in which consumers, farmers and civil society could be involved in the creation of alternative models of understanding economic relations, now more focused on the concept of common good than based on the mere economic interest.