Food, Sociology of

Food is a subject that seems to both slip away and to expand when one tries to understand it. We cannot simply analyze the production and consumption of food, of food diets, and of table manners, and their evolution in time and space. As food has been cooked for thousands of years, we need to integrate the notion of cuisine , a polysemous term with multiple significations, into the study of food. We also need to include in this domain of study the representations, discourses, and collective beliefs associated with the notion of food.