Food studies

Food studies is the critical examination of food and its contexts within science, art, history, society, and other fields. It is distinctive from other food-related areas of study such as nutrition, agriculture, gastronomy, and culinary arts in that it tends to look beyond the mere consumption, production, and aesthetic appreciation of food and tries to illuminate food as it relates to a vast number of academic fields. It is thus a field that involves and attracts philosophers, historians, scientists, literary scholars, sociologists, art historians, anthropologists, and others.

This is an interdisciplinary and emerging field, and as such there is a substantial crossover between academic and popular work. Practitioners reference best-selling authors, such as the journalist Michael Pollan, as well as scholars, such as the historian Warren Belasco and the anthropologist Sidney Mintz. While this makes the discipline somewhat volatile, it also makes it interesting and engaging. The journalist Paul Levy has noted, for example, that "Food studies is a subject so much in its infancy that it would be foolish to try to define it or in any way circumscribe it, because the topic, discipline or method you rule out today might be tomorrow’s big thing."

Qualitative questions that are wrestled with include: What impact does food have on the environment? What are the ethics of eating? How does food contribute to systems of oppression? How are foods symbolic markers of identity? At the same time practitioners may ask seemingly basic questions that are nonetheless fundamental to human existence. Who chooses what we eat and why? How are foods traditionally prepared—and where is the boundary between authentic culinary heritage and invented traditions? How is food integrated into classrooms? There are also questions of the spatialization of foodways and the relationship to place. This has led to the development of the concept of "foodscape" - introduced in the early 1990s - and the related practice of foodscape mapping. Discussion of these questions has increased as a result of public concern about issues which have arisen as a result of the emergence of a vast array of novel food technologies throughout the last century, ranging from chemical fertilizers to GMOs. Pursuers of food studies approach these questions by first understanding the scientific, economic, and philosophical issues surrounding them.

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