of transversality, as it is dedicated to the recognition, protection, and promotion of activities related to food, sustainability, health, citizenship, diversity, and pluralism. It involves everything from ingredient production, community traditions, cultural and ethical issues permeating gastronomy, to the final human experience of being satiated (or not) within diverse systems of human knowledge. By interconnecting sources and experiences from consumer law, environmental law, business law, and cultural law, gastronomic law seeks to ensure fair, safe, and innovative practices in the food universe, respecting traditions, promoting inclusion, and guaranteeing access to quality nutrition for all. II. EPISTEMOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY AND GASTRONOMIC LAW Identifying the elements that compose the object under investigation is essential to attribute independence and autonomy to it as a scientific branch to be explored. These are the elements that “structure” the discipline, granting it the perspective of “being,” the ontological character that transforms it into something cognoscible (apprehended through plural knowledge), and, from there, making it functionalizable (assigning it normative and reasonable purposes). For “being,” in itself, is mere existence; whereas having “functions,” on the other hand, means solidarity. Hence the close connection between structure and function37. In an anthropological scenario, structure as a system of elements contributes to the formation of scientific models, provided that such models allow the interconnection of elements, belong to a group of transformation, react as elements change, and are constructed in such a way that their functioning explains the observed facts38. Indeed, various legal institutes possess their own existential or ontic elements that allow their identification, autonomy, and realization of models in a simple manner (for example: contract, civil liability, legal transaction, legal relationship, etc.). Likewise, numerous legal disciplines are endowed with codes or statutes, with general parts, concepts, principles, institutes, and special parts. Gastronomic law, similar to other legal sectors inherent to postmodernity (environmental, urban, artistic, etc.), is subject to the understanding of norms and decisions that govern the “legal good constitutionally protected,” 37 BOBBIO, Norberto. Dalla struttura alla funzione. Nuovi studi di teoria generale del Diritto. Roma: Laterza, 2007 38 LÉVI-STRAUS, Claude. A noção de estrutura em Etnologia. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1.980 76 FERNANDO RODRIGUES MARTINS | MIGUEL CABRAL DE ARAÚJO MARTINS
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