Social studies on trust are extensive and multidisciplinary and usually depart from a premise that casts trust within social relations. The empirical analysis in this article - thirty in-depth interviews with consumers of organics in Lisbon - entails two types of trust ('disembedded' and 'embedded'), and explores a third type: trust in organics through sensorial everyday life 'tests'. The metabolic behaviour of food and the absence or presence of earthworms, caterpillars and their tracks (eg. holes left in fruit and vegetables) - allusively called 'caterpillar tests' - are relevant bases of trust. The hypothesis that trust can be understood as a phenomenon that emerges from the relationship between human and non-human beings is examined. A notion of trust that is ontologically informed by relational and non-humanist perspectives is advanced, wherein trust is variously enacted in everyday life.
Trust; Organic food; Foods; Post-humanism