Sociology of food

Sociology of food is the study of food as it relates to the history, progression, and future development of society. This includes production, consumption, distribution, conflict, medical application, ritual, spiritual, ethical, and cultural applications, environmental and labour issues.

The aspect of food distribution in our society can be examined through the analysis of the changes in the food supply chain. Globalization in particular, has significant effects on the food supply chain by enabling scale effect in the food distribution industry.

Scale effects resulting from centralized acquisition purchase centres in the food supply chain favor large players such as big retailers or distributors in the food distribution market. This is due to the fact that they can utilize their strong market power and financial advantage over smaller players. Having both strong market power and greater access to the financial credit market meant that they can impose barriers to entry and cement their position in the food distribution market. This would result in a food distribution chain that is characterized by large players on one end and small players choosing niche markets to operate in on the other end. The existence of smaller players in specialized food distribution markets could be attributed to their shrinking market share and their inability to compete with the larger players due to the scale effects. Through this mechanism, globalization has displaced smaller role players. Another mechanism troubling the specialized food distribution markets is the ability of distribution chains to possess their own brand. Stores with their own brand are able to combat price wars between competitors by lowering the price of their own brand, thus making consumers more likely to purchase goods from them.

Since the beginning of mankind, food was important simply for the purpose of nourishment. As primates walked the Earth, they solely consumed food for a source of energy as they had to hunt and forage because food was not easily on hand. By early humans fending for themselves, they had figured out that they needed a high energy diet to keep going on a daily basis to survive.

These developments eventually lead to agriculture, which also goes into the labor for food and the economic part of the sociology of food. As the years went on, food become more and more of a way to bring cultures and people together. In many cultures, food is what brings people together. This carried for centuries. From the homo-sapiens hunting and gathering, to the colonists to the New World sharing a feast with the Native Americans (that carried on as a tradition named Thanksgiving), to the popularization of restaurants/eating out in the last several decades and the togetherness that comes with eating, shows how the communication and connectivity that comes from it. According to sociologists there are different groups of food that are divided up due to their purpose and meaning. There are cultural super foods, which are the stables for a culture. There are prestige foods, which often reflects economic status, body image food which is mainly consumed for the good of the body. Another would be sympathetic foods that are eaten for their desirable properties, like a superstitious property. Lastly, there is physiologic group, which are consumed for a specific category (like what a pregnant woman eats for a healthy pregnancy). These different categories help researchers and sociologists study culture in the perspective of food. It often shows how food grows, molds and changes with society. For example, if someone believes in homeopathy, that would fall under the sympathetic foods or physiologic foods. This is because they are consumed for their properties and beliefs of what it could do. Another example of one of these categories of foods would be caviar or oysters for the prestige foods, because they are often more expensive and those who consume it and purchase it do so to show their socioeconomic status, or SES.

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