In this article we study the social and generational conditions in which mothers can manage the relation between food and health. Our analysis is based on two imbricate types of explanatory factors: the plurality of norms that can affect food behaviour and the processes of familiar transmission of food practices, knowledge and abilities. Mothers try to regulate the effects of these two factors and to acquire skills of symbolic and practice management of the relation between food and health. We propose to consider three groups of mothers. The mothers of the first group are of humble origin and live in contexts of action structured by opposition between an individualisation of food practices and their family heritages that perpetuate the legitimacy of the collective controls on the person. The relations between food and health are more uncertain because of the implicit coexistence of this double base of norms. The mothers of the second group are of middle class and live in contexts of unified actions. They have a larger skill ability of relation between food and health. The third group socially heterogeneous is composed of mothers that are highly reflexive, thus frequently reconsider theirs practices of food.