Anthropology of Food: History, Topics, and Trajectories to Understand a Discipline

Abstract

The anthropology of food is a sub-field of cultural anthropology interested in studying food and foodways. This article provides a concise overview of the anthropology of food, tracing its development from the early twentieth century to contemporary debates and emerging research trajectories. Drawing on foundational work by figures such as Boas and Malinowski, it shows how early anthropologists approached food as integral to understanding social organization, kinship, and cultural meaning. As the field evolved, structuralist, materialist, feminist, and political-economic perspectives broadened its scope, highlighting the symbolic significance of cuisine, the interplay between environment and subsistence, and the pivotal role of gender and class in shaping food practices. In recent decades, the anthropology of food has engaged intensively with globalization, investigating how transnational flows reshape culinary identities, local economies, and cultural heritage, as well as other significant topics. At the same time, emerging themes—such as multispecies perspectives, sensory studies, and the application of innovative methodologies—offer new lenses for understanding how food mediates relationships between humans, non-human beings, and environments. By examining case studies spanning regions from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Americas, this article illustrates how contemporary anthropologists use food as a prism to investigate cultural identity, social change, ethical relations, and the complex entanglements of local and global food systems.

1. Introduction

Today, defining food as a cultural object may seem almost self-evident, akin to the possibility of developing research related to the socio-cultural aspects of food production and consumption. Over the past two decades, a new way of perceiving and understanding food has solidified worldwide [1]. However, a purely functionalist approach, which views food merely as “material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy”—as defined by one of the leading English-language dictionaries [2]—has yet to fade entirely. Cultural anthropology, particularly the branch of “anthropology of food”, has been a pioneering discipline in exploring and conceptualising this new understanding of food as a prism through which to examine a community’s culture and its socio-cultural transformations [3]. Cultural anthropology studies human societies, cultures, and their development, with a focus on understanding the customs, beliefs, practices, and social structures that define human groups through a qualitative approach involving long-term fieldwork, participant observation, and interviews to collect detailed, firsthand accounts of people’s lives [4]. It has provided crucial insights into human diversity and how cultural forces shape social behaviour and worldviews. In this effort, food has become one of the objects of research used to understand how communities manage their lives, interact with the environment, and shape interpersonal relationships [5].

This article, which grew from discussions at the 2024 conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) and a panel on the future of food anthropology, aims to outline how anthropology has explored food, beginning with contributions from the early 20th century. It also offers insights into sources that can be used for further study and highlights emerging trajectories in the debate, supported by brief case studies that exemplify ongoing research. Overall, it provides novel insight into this field of research and the state of the art of the research within the EASA Anthropology of Food Network, one of the largest professional networks of specialists in this field.

2. Methodology

This article is based on multilayered research that combines a narrative review with a case-study analysis (Figure 1). The combination of these two methodologies offers breadth and depth in the exposition: the narrative review offers a broad understanding of the literature. At the same time, the case studies provide detailed, context-specific insights that can inform and enrich broader theoretical discussions.

A narrative review is a qualitative synthesis of existing research and literature to comprehensively overview a specific topic through interpretive analysis without the rigid schematism of a systematic review [6]. In this article, a narrative review was used to outline the development of this sector within cultural anthropology as well as its key topics, resources, and trajectories. This work builds on the seminal contribution of Mintz and Du Bois [3], who produced the first historical account of the origins and trajectories of food anthropology. In doing so, this present review extends the range of bibliographic sources to consider more recent decades and addresses contemporary and emerging global challenges pertinent to anthropology. Relevant sources were identified using citation databases such as Scopus, Google Scholar, and the Anthropological Index Online.

By trajectory, we mean a consistent focus on specific topics that recur in the literature and are subjects of current research. Specifically, the article focuses on the following: post-colonialism and Indigenous rights; heritage transformation and its socio-economic use; food security and social marginalisation/inclusion; the signification and change of diets; sensorial understanding and its use; food and post-humanism. For each of these trajectories, we identify specific case studies of current, ongoing research to shed light on recent developments in the field. These studies provide concrete examples of ethnographic strategies and results emerging from the field and the new theoretical challenges the anthropological community is addressing.

We note that this article is not a complete catalogue of all the work in the anthropology of food—fortunately, it is now far too broad and lively field to be contained within a single piece—but, rather, is a tool for understanding the broad-scale intellectual history and development of an important anthropological sub-discipline. Moreover, our emphasis is on the social anthropology of food and not the biosocially grounded approach of the closely intertwined discipline of nutritional anthropology; readers wishing for an overview of nutritional anthropology may find Ulijaszek [7] a useful starting point.

3. Untangle the Trajectories

3.1. Beginning of a Journey

Food is not merely a “simple matter”. Using the well-known pair of opposites, nature and culture [8], food represents a synthesis of these two aspects: on the one hand, the materiality and natural quality of its ingredients; on the other, the intangibility of knowledge tied to methods of sourcing raw materials, techniques of transformation and preparation, and practices associated with consumption. Given this distinctive nature—and the need for food for all cultures—it is unsurprising that the anthropological community has repeatedly turned its focus to food and subsistence methods throughout the history of the discipline.

The modern history of cultural anthropology is conventionally marked by the works of Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski, scholars born in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their scientific contributions in the early decades of the twentieth century defined the theoretical and methodological trajectories of cultural anthropology [9]. Their works also hold significance for debates on food and food culture.

In their writings, one finds meticulous descriptions of food systems within the communities they studied. In particular, Boas, for instance [10], examined food as part of his broader ethnographic research on Indigenous communities, predominantly among Native American groups in the Polar regions and Pacific Northwest. He observed how food practices—such as fishing, foraging, and food preservation—were adapted to their environment and encoded cultural knowledge related to sustainability and social organization. For Boas, these practices were essential to understanding these communities’ cultural systems and social roles. His work emphasised how food practices are intertwined with myths, rituals, and social relations, thereby reflecting broader cultural meanings and values.

Following this example of cultural relativism and holistic analysis, Malinowski [11,12] used food, specifically yams, as a lens to explore the systems of material and immaterial exchanges among the communities of the Trobriand Islands. His analysis of the cultivation, distribution, and consumption (or non-consumption) of this vital tuber demonstrated that food is not simply a means of sustenance; it also serves as a medium for building reciprocity, alliances, and social prestige, with each exchange carrying both symbolic and social significance. In this aspect, the work of the anthropologist was able to demonstrate the multiplicity of uses and meanings of food, opening the field for anthropology to explore food from different perspectives and angles.

In the years following the publications of Boas and Malinowski, a new generation of scholars continued to focus the ethnographic lens on food and alimentation, situating these studies within a broader interest in the structure of local cultural systems and their social frameworks. Among these, Margaret Mead’s work in Papua New Guinea, presented in Growing Up in New Guinea [13], provides a notable example. Mead demonstrated how food gathering, preparation, and consumption were intricately linked to gender roles and social organization. Moreover, she showed how material and symbolic access to food played a fundamental role in children’s socialization, shaping their development and social learning.

British-trained anthropologists conducted more in-depth studies on the structure of food systems. One well-known example is Evans-Pritchard’s research with the Nuer in Sudan [14], where he described how cattle herding was central to the Nuer economy, diet, and social organization, underpinning much of their social structure and cultural identity. Specifically, he showed that cattle were not merely economic resources but the fulcrum of social life and cultural practices, including marriage, political alliances, and spiritual beliefs, being a cultural symbol rather than just a source of sustenance. On the other hand, Audrey Richards’ work with the Bemba in Zambia in the 1930s offers another key study. In Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia [15], Richards employed what would today be considered a holistic food systems approach, analysing the connections between agricultural practices, food scarcity, and nutritional issues and how these were closely tied to the development of Bemba social structures. As a functionalist, Richards primarily viewed the practices and ideas surrounding food as satisfying the needs for survival and ensuring individual and social continuity. However, she also recognized that food needed to be understood as part of a total social system.

3.2. From Structuralism to Materialism and Beyond

These pioneering studies helped establish food systems and practices as essential to understanding the interplay between food and society. They laid the basis for future research concerning the interplay between food production and environmental adaptation. However, while food entered the anthropological discourse, anthropologists paid limited attention to culinary aspects, such as techniques and aesthetics used to prepare food, organize meal structure, and select and process ingredients.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, a new generation of researchers, following the hermeneutic approach known as structuralist anthropology, significantly shaped the analysis of cuisine and food by highlighting how culinary practices reflect deep cultural structures [16,17]. Meanwhile, outside anthropology, a new discussion about the meaning of contemporary food consumption was emerging. Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of the most prominent figures in structuralism, introduced this perspective in his famous article “The Culinary Triangle” [18] and later expanded on it in his book The Raw and the Cooked [19]. He argued that food preparation and culinary practices reveal fundamental binary oppositions in human thought, such as raw versus cooked, nature versus culture, and fresh versus rotten. More broadly, the French anthropologist suggested that food transformations symbolize the broader cultural process of shaping nature into culture. On the same line, Mary Douglas further expanded structuralist perspectives in food studies, particularly in her influential essay “Deciphering a Meal” [20]. Douglas applied structural analysis to meal patterns, arguing that what societies consider food and how they organize meals reflect their social structures and belief systems. Her work emphasised that meals and food taboos are not casual but are structured systems of symbols and codes that help order social relations and reinforce boundaries of purity and pollution.

Overall, structural anthropology revealed that food practices are deeply embedded in societies’ cultural logic, shaping how people understand their world and social relationships through structured, although often unconscious, symbolic systems. This indicated the crucial importance of the symbolic dimension of food, which became one of the key levels of anthropological analysis in the following decades [3].

While structural anthropology explored the symbolic value of food, a new wave of studies between the 1960s and the 1970s began drawing attention to the interconnection between the material characteristics of local food systems and social organizations and practices. Works by Roy Rappaport, Yehudi Cohen, and Marvin Harris exemplified this approach, representing the emergence of what became known as materialist anthropology. Roy Rappaport, in his influential study Pigs for the Ancestors [21], examined the ritualistic use of pigs in New Guinea highland societies to demonstrate how food-related rituals regulate population size, manage environmental impact, and stabilize ecological systems. On the other hand, Yehudi Cohen, in The Human Adaptation [22], proposed that food practices and subsistence strategies are adaptive responses to environmental conditions, forming part of the broader system of social organization in order to maximize resource use, ensuring survival and social stability. Finally, Marvin Harris, in his influential work Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture [23], argued that dietary practices are often rooted in practical, resource-based decisions, with food preferences and taboos emerging as adaptations to increase energy efficiency and resource use.

Largely, the materialist approach to the cultural study of food represented a response to and an antithesis of the contribution provided by structuralist anthropology. While the latter suggests that foodways are shaped based on the community’s or the individual’s beliefs, the former suggests that food practices are not only shaped by cultural beliefs but are also grounded in adaptive strategies essential for ecological survival and social cohesion, underscoring the role of material conditions in shaping human behaviour [24].

Starting in the late 1970s, while the debate between structuralists and materialists was still raging, the perimeter of food anthropology was further expanded, thanks to contributions from the emerging feminist anthropology. This approach to anthropological analysis stemmed from the broader debate about women’s rights, examining how gender shapes human experiences, social structures, and cultural practices. While feminist anthropologists were studying how gender intersects with power, inequality, identity, and other social factors, their contribution significantly impacted the study of food and food systems by foregrounding the roles, labour, and cultural meanings associated with women’s work in food production and consumption. Anthropology of Food and Body [25], a collection of articles published by Carole Counihan in the 1980s and 1990s, shed light on the development of this investigation, focusing on how food operates as a cultural medium through which women express identity, status, and relationships. Similarly, in her ethnography Food, Gender, and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes [26], Mary Weismantel explores how food preparation, consumption, and sharing practices in Ecuadorian communities reflect and reproduce gender identities and social hierarchies.

Alongside this debate, during the same period, reflections on the socio-cultural reproduction underlying forms of food and gastronomy (i.e., all the aspects concerning food production, processing, and consumption in a given community [27]) also intensified. Key contributions in this area came from Pierre Bourdieu and Jack Goody. In Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste [28], Pierre Bourdieu demonstrated how food choices are deeply entwined with social structures, class distinctions, and cultural capital. Specifically, he argued that tastes in food, as in art, music, and other cultural realms, are not merely individual preferences but are shaped by social positioning, reinforcing class boundaries. In doing so, he also suggests that the spaces and times dedicated to food should be read through the prism of class belonging rather than being taken for granted [29]. On a different note, Jack Goody, in Cooking, Cuisine, and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology [30], examined the role of food preparation and cuisine in reinforcing social hierarchies. While Bourdieu exclusively focused on France, Goody uses a comparative approach to analyse food practices in European and African societies, challenging the assumption that all societies follow the same evolutionary path in their culinary developments. He argued that the emergence of complex cuisines—marked by refined cooking techniques, specialised ingredients, and elaborate dining rituals—was historically tied to social stratification and the availability of surplus resources, making food a symbol of social status and power, with the upper classes adopting sophisticated cuisines that reflected and reinforced their privileged positions.

3.3. New Venues for Debate

The debates of the 1970s placed food at the centre of the anthropological stage, moving from scattered contributions to a more institutional and cohesive form. This process was driven by the organization of associations, events, and specialized journals designed to foster shared moments and tools for the development of the field. The first organization established was the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition in the United States in 1974. This association is a section of the American Anthropological Association and focuses on research related to food, nutrition (i.e., the process through which humans select and receive the food necessary for them to grow and be healthy), and agriculture from an anthropological perspective. Just a few years later, in 1979, the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery emerged. This prestigious annual event brings together scholars, chefs, writers, and food enthusiasts to discuss historical, cultural, and scientific aspects of food, creating a transdisciplinary space for debates on topics such as food heritage, culinary traditions, and food as a cultural practice. In 1980, the International Commission on the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition was also established as part of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. This organization marked the first attempt of a global organization of anthropologists interested in food and aimed to promote cross-cultural and comparative research on food and nutrition, fostering collaboration among food anthropologists worldwide.

These were only the first initiatives, later joined by other notable organizations, such as the Association for the Study of Food and Society (1985), the EASA Anthropology of Food Network (2012), and, more recently, the International Society for Gastronomic Sciences and Studies (2020). These organizations periodically organize events and initiatives that mobilize the international anthropological community, fostering debate and creating outlets for new research.

Alongside these aggregative entities, specialized journals played a crucial role in defining the contours of the debate. Among the pioneering publications were Digest: A Journal of Food and Culture (launched in 1979), Appetite (1980), and Food and Foodways (1985), the latter being the only journal explicitly dedicated to anthropological studies of food. From these early publications, the field has expanded to include interdisciplinary journals such as Food, Culture & Society (1996), Journal of the Anthropology of Food (AOF)/Journal de l’Anthropologie des Aliments (1999), Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies (2001), and, more recently, Gastronomy (2023).

Together, these institutions represent the scientific infrastructure supporting the expansion of food anthropology.

3.4. Food in a Globalized World

As the anthropological debate on food continued to gain strength through new platforms for discussion and dissemination, the 1980s marked a growing focus on the transnational dimensions of food. In this context, the voice of food anthropology began to integrate into a broader economic anthropology debate, which started exploring the socio-cultural and political meanings of international relations. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History [31] by Sidney W. Mintz brought this new sensitivity to food studies, focusing its analysis on one of the most-used food products: sugar. In this volume, Mintz explored the historical trajectory of sugar, from a rare luxury to a common commodity, connecting its production and consumption to the broader systems of global capitalism and colonialism. Taking his move from a perspective deeply rooted in materialist anthropology, this investigation traced the profound social and economic shifts driven by the sugar trade, particularly its role in slavery and imperialism. Mintz delineated the power dynamics between colonizing and colonized nations, showing how quotidian food can be a prism through which grand histories unfold.

Sweetness and Power opened a critical line of inquiry for subsequent years—namely, the study of the phenomena and impacts of globalization—and continues to serve as a reference text for a methodological approach to tracing a single foodstuff across time and place. Globalization refers to the process through which people, cultures, goods, and ideas increasingly move across borders, creating interconnected systems that influence social, economic, and cultural life globally; specifically, it shapes local identities, transforms social structures, and leads to the blending or clash of cultural practices [32]. While the globalization debate has seen anthropologists tackle these transformations from diverse perspectives [33], one facet of this reflection also includes the transformation of food practices. A foundational contribution in this area came from Arjun Appadurai. Although his work—Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization [34]—is often centered on its modelling of global cultural flows and their impact on identity, migration, and media, it also provides analytical insights for viewing globalization as a process that affects local and national food practices. By focusing on the transformation and diffusion of Indian cuisine, Appadurai provided an analytical framework for examining culinary hybridization, exploring the interpretive processes behind the diffusion of ethnic cuisines and the emergence of new fusion cuisines.

While Appadurai offers a broad view of globalization processes, Richard Wilk examined the phenomenon from a local perspective. His Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists [35] demonstrated how globalization shapes Caribbean foodways, focusing on the dynamic interaction between local food traditions and global forces. The book investigates how food became an instrument through which the cultural identity of a place is constructed and historical meaning is redefined in a dialogical process between present-day global market demands (such as tourism) and the public use of local history and heritage. This process is expressed in new culinary forms that blend the local and the global, creating new forms of perceived authenticity.

Further exploring the emic perspective on globalization, James L. Watson explored the process of appropriation and transformation of a global gastronomic model into the specificities of local society. In Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia [36], Watson studied how McDonald’s has been adopted in East Asia. Tackling issues such as cultural adaptation, and resistance, this book illuminates broader questions about how global food corporations impact local food cultures and how communities push back to maintain cultural values, indicating the dynamic and unpredictable dimension of the relationship between the local and the global.

Finally, alongside these studies, new research has progressively explored the economic, cultural, and spatial networks through which foods travel on a global scale. In the wake of the lively discussion about the possibilities and necessity of a new way of conducting ethnography [37], Ian Cook delved into the routes taken by papaya from its place of production in Jamaica to its arrival in a refrigerator in North London apartment. His contribution provides an example of how globalization is encapsulated in everyone’s quotidian experience, pointing to new ways of thinking about the spatial and temporal relationships between food and people on both global and local scales.

3.5. Activism, Heritage, and Sustainability at Large

This interest in globalization is only one among many topics that anthropologists began exploring through the lens of food. Throughout its history, the anthropology of food has developed by expanding its horizons and adding dimensions to the debate in response to emerging sensitivities of the time, increasingly integrating its voice with those of other disciplines interested in the social and cultural study of food. In the 2000s, this process continued, responding to a new sensitivity toward food that aimed at appreciating and valuing the specificities of local food heritage and increasingly viewing food as a platform for political struggle. This new era was initiated at the international level by the success of political and cultural movements such as Slow Food, which aims to support, defend, and promote small local productions and raise awareness about food’s economic, aesthetic, and cultural value [38].

Interpreting this period, the anthropological debate began to investigate food’s ethical and political dimensions. In this journey, the research of Donna R. Gabaccia began to define an initial agenda for the debate. For example, her work We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans [39] explores how immigration and ethnic cuisines have shaped American foodways, emphasising the importance of cultural diversity in the U.S. food landscape. In particular, she discusses food as a site of cultural expression and activism, where communities can assert their identities and resist assimilation pressures. From this early contribution, new works have explored various forms of activism. These include, for example, Margaret Gray’s Labor and the Locavore: The Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic [40], which examines the locavore movement’s impact on agricultural labour in New York, and Cristina Grasseni’s Beyond Alternative Food Networks: Italy’s Solidarity Purchase Groups [41], which explores the reality of alternative food networks in Italy.

Alongside these experiences, and in response to the broader debate revitalized by the establishment of the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage and the inclusion of food and cuisines as potential heritage of interest, anthropology has begun to investigate the heritage dimension of food more closely, exploring the specificities of individual products and the processes of heritage-making. In this sense, Robert Ulin’s work has been pioneering. In his Vintages and Traditions [42], he deconstructs the viticultural image of prestigious regions such as Bordeaux and Médoc, challenging the widespread assumption that the area’s elite wines enjoy especially favourable conditions of climate and soil by indicating the crucial historical and social factors that created this imaginary. On a different note, Amy Trubek problematized the concept of terroir, which is often used to define and explain the interlink between food products, communities, and places. In her The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir [43], she articulated how terroir can be considered an ethnographic category that expresses the embodiment of the cultural, environmental, and historical factors influencing food production by local communities and the sensory experiences of finished food products. In this aspect, it describes the role of food in expressing local identity, a local identity that appears threatened by the processes of standardization brought along by globalization.

Like Trubek, other researchers have emphasised the risk of losing local specificities and the biocultural diversity tied to food due to the globalization and modernization of the global food system. At the same time, as local dynamics aimed at protecting and enhancing local gastronomic heritage have developed in response to the disappearance of these specificities, anthropologists have sought to deconstruct the often overly optimistic view of these processes. They highlight the implicit exclusion and marginalisation that promotion can entail, and the macro- and micro-political dynamics tied to them. A particularly significant contribution in this regard comes from Cristina Grasseni [44], who has explored the complexities surrounding authenticity certification for dairy production in Northern Italy. Grasseni’s work underscores how efforts to protect traditional products through certification often involve preserving cultural heritage and navigating power dynamics, social tensions, and debates over the true meaning of “authentic” food. This perspective brings attention to the stakes of heritage preservation, showing that while it can protect cultural identity, it also introduces questions of access, representation, and control over these prized food traditions: these issues become even more cogent and crucial to the discussion when dealing with conflict scenarios, such as the Jordan River Valley, as demonstrated by Anne Meneley [45], Daniel Monterescu [46], and Juman Simaan [47].

While the anthropology of food has mainly investigated aspects of cultural and socio-economic sustainability, in the past decades, the discipline has provided significant contributions to the broader debate on sustainability by exploring how food practices, production systems, and consumption patterns intersect with ecological and social resilience [48]. While anthropologists have explored the meanings and socio-economic relationships underpinning and substantiating specific commodities in given societies, such as bread in the Mediterranean region [49,50,51], they have investigated traditional and Indigenous food systems, highlighting their sustainable practices and the potential lessons they offer for contemporary food challenges [52]. For instance, research on agroecological practices and traditional ecological knowledge demonstrates how localized food systems often embody sustainability principles through biodiversity, resource conservation, and cyclical use of natural inputs [53]. Additionally, the concept of food sovereignty, as explored by scholars like Annette Desmarais, Nettie Wiebe, and Hannah Wittman [54], ties sustainability to the rights of communities to control their food systems, resisting industrial agriculture’s environmental degradation and fostering social equity. Anthropologists have also critiqued the industrial food system, examining the socio-cultural consequences of industrial food production and its ecological impacts, such as soil depletion, water overuse, and greenhouse gas emissions, while highlighting the need for systemic change [55]. Through these varied lenses, the anthropology of food has delved into the complexity of the present times, providing a holistic interpretation and showing that sustainability and resilience could be crucial keywords for research in the near future.

4. Contemporary Development

From this account, it is clear how the anthropological debate on food has expanded and deepened over the course of a century, exploring various aspects that encompass not only the products themselves but also the production systems and the consumption practices surrounding them. This exploration consistently prioritizes understanding the emic perspectives—that is, the insider viewpoints—that emerge and evolve through food. When looking at the more recent past, we enter an area that is still evolving, marked by research that is often ongoing. We, therefore, turn to a focus on these active research efforts and the key terms that define them. In this regard, this section presents a selection of research that is representative of the ongoing debate at EASA and demonstrates a variety of theories and methods in the current anthropology of food. While each study leans heavily on participant observation as a methodological pillar, they each also reveal adaptations to specific contexts, research questions, and diverse theoretical landscapes. The case studies have been selected to illustrate major themes in the contemporary anthropology of food and are drawn from scholars around the globe who are working in diverse research settings. They develop trajectories that are growing in relevance in the debate; the following case studies shed light on them.

4.1. Postcolonial Food Heritage in Southern Africa

Understanding and reckoning with colonial legacies and postcolonial realities is a major theme in anthropology today, including within the anthropology of food. A particular concern within the anthropology of food is how communities marginalised through colonial processes and the logic of modernity/coloniality [56] can reclaim and redefine their cultural narratives through the preservation and transmission of food heritage. The preservation and revitalisation of community foodways represent not merely culinary traditions but a reclamation of cultural identity, which has often been threatened, silenced, or sidelined [57] through colonialism and apartheid, coupled with globalized food practices. These processes often have salient implications for human dietary health [58].

Research undertaken by Jessica Leigh Thornton [59] in communities across Namibia and South Africa has focused on the sensory conceptualisations of food heritage and heritage’s role in shaping identity within local food cultures (Figure 2, Figure 3 and Figure 4). By investigating how traditional culinary practices, recipes, and food-related rituals serve as markers of cultural identity and continuity, this work has sought to understand the way that oral revalorisation of these food traditions has unfolded, exploring how they are transmitted across generations and the impact of disrupted foodways due to colonisation and social upheaval. South Africa’s colonial legacy has deeply affected the cultures and identities of its First Nations Peoples, who face ongoing socio-economic challenges [60]. Efforts to revitalise Indigenous knowledge systems and rights are hindered by the homogenisation of cultural identities and limited participation in creating intangible cultural heritage [61]. Food heritage initiatives have been identified as a productive path to address these impacts by preserving and promoting traditional culinary practices as Intangible Cultural Heritage, thereby countering cultural homogenisation and enhancing participation in heritage creation [62]. By emphasising food as a cultural practice that links the past to the present, marginalised communities are enabled to reclaim and revitalise their identities amidst historical and contemporary challenges [63]. Food heritage thus becomes a marker of cultural continuity, illustrating the resilience and pride of First Nations communities impacted by colonisation and apartheid [64].

4.2. Indigenous Being and Eating in Honduras

Moradel, in northern Honduras, is a village of the Indigenous Pesh people, situated in a contact zone where imperial projects, violent dispossession, and Indigenous life–world intersect and interact. Within the cosmos inhabited by the Pesh—similar to other Indigenous groups, particularly across the Americas—being is not genetically predetermined but rather a process of becoming with others through the circulation of substance [65]. Eating, as one of the fundamental ways in which substance circulates between beings, becomes a fraught space in which questions of identity, being, ethics, epistemology, and ontology are contested [66,67].

The work of Juan Mejia López [68] explores being and personhood through a focus on a Pesh dish called sasal, a white, sticky, and sour dish made of cassava (Figure 5). Its ubiquity in everyday discussions of Pesh identity, as well as on the table, gives it weight as a central object of inquiry through which relations can be traced and the sensorial-mediated, more-than-human cosmos explored. Discussions around cassava cultivation, sasal preparation, and the act of eating it together appear not only as the synchronization of multiple human and more-than-human actors but also as a process of consubstantiation. In this manner, to eat is to become.

Mejia López attempts to answer the deceptively simple question, ‘How are we to eat?’ through an ethnographic exploration of the ways in which Indigenous philosophical approaches to eating are articulated in contact zones historically marked by violent dispossession and forced assimilation. This endeavour involves not only highlighting historically marginalised or invisible epistemologies as part of wider calls for the decolonization of anthropology and social thought in general [69,70,71] but also allowing Indigenous modes of thought to enrich and multiply one’s own world [72]. Pesh modes of knowing do not appear as isolated remnants of the past or idle rumination, but as voices that could destabilize hegemonic epistemologies regarding nature and food.

4.3. Hungry Ghosts in Hong Kong

While crises like food insecurity and famine have profound biological, political, and geographical consequences, they also leave social and cultural traces related to food practices, which anthropologists are well-poised to study. Coping and survival strategies [73], changes in food practices and preferences [74], and relationships with and circulation of power are some strands of research related to acute food shortages, while hunger—both as a category itself and as a metaphor—has also been ethnographically elaborated in other contexts [75,76,77].

The work of Tyffany Choi [78] examines the afterlives of the Second World War-era famine in Hong Kong by historically investigating the thriving local traditions of feeding ghosts through folk-religious rituals. Locally understood, hungry ghosts are the desperate, fearsome dead who died unjustly deaths. Unless regularly placated with offerings, these ghosts relieve their hunger by siphoning the vitality of the living in horrifying manners. Taking a hauntological approach, as first suggested by Jacques Derrida [79] and further developed by others [80], is the practice of illuminating the spectral pasts and phantom futures that shape the present, Choi explores what the ghosts are, why they are hungry, why and how they are fed, and, ultimately, what is created through the practices of feeding ghosts. By investigating Hungry Ghost Festivals, makeshift shrines during the 2019 anti-Extradition Law Bill Amendment protests, and the narratives and urban legends that circulate within communities, the work maps the tentacular ways in which memories of wartime hunger and cannibalism continue to influence contemporary cultural imagination. Food anthropology is not always just about the presence of food; it can be about the reverberations of its absence as well. Tracing the way that locally and culturally specific ideas of hunger have travelled and changed over time through different societal shifts, Choi finds that feeding ghosts are a trans-rational, nonmodern act of care [81], which offers a path to nurture hauntological ties, heal collective traumas, and build communities across a fractured local population [82] and the living and the dead [83].

4.4. Food Security and Sustainability in South Africa

Studies on food can be approached from an applied anthropological perspective, as seen from early in the development of the anthropology of food through Margaret Mead’s work with the US National Research Council’s Committee on Food Habits and the sustained work of anthropologists in nutrition and public health programmes worldwide [84]. Applied anthropologists working with food have an important role today in engaging with questions of sustainability and climate change and responding to instability in the global food system alongside rising rates of food insecurity [85,86].

The increasing consolidation of the food value chain—both vertically and horizontally—makes equitable distribution of power and profit within the food system nearly impossible [87]. Government and policy actions aimed at addressing inequalities within the food system are often high-level, generalized, and not based on the experiences of those individuals who encounter these systems on a day-to-day basis [88]. Applied anthropologists working on questions of reducing food insecurity, such as Memory Reid et al. [89], often take a sustainability approach, focusing on the intersection of environmental sustainability, social inequality, and cultural practices. Their ethnographic grounding provides space for the essential inclusion of those who have lived experience with food insecurity. Such work contributes to understanding the debates on the complex relationships between food systems, cultural practices, and societal change, focusing on how traditional knowledge and community-based solutions can address contemporary food insecurity [90,91,92,93].

Reid’s work explores sustainable approaches to improving food security by asking, ‘In what ways can the reduction of food waste contribute to enhancing food access and security in urban environments?’ Working in Johannesburg, South Africa, the team investigated the potential of natural food preservation techniques such as drying and fermenting to extend the shelf life of food and repurpose food that would otherwise be discased or destined for landfills. A wealth of multi-generational wisdom exists in natural preservation techniques, offering a valuable opportunity for knowledge sharing and transfer (Figure 6). Drying is the most cost-effective method, requiring minimal water, energy, ingredients, and time.

4.5. Social Inclusion During Times of Change in Tunisia

During times of change and instability, food is often a concern. This includes both nutritional aspects and the practical questions of how to address food insecurity occasioned by crises [94], but also how policy and power are negotiated and how the social and symbolic aspects of diets and the acts of eating and feeding change in uncertain times [95,96]. Anthropologists have been particularly interested in ways food practices are lived every day in contexts of instability such as war [97], natural disasters [98], and within unstable political and economic regimes [99].

More than a decade ago, Tunisians came together to reclaim “bread and dignity” in the spark of the Arab Spring. Nowadays, facing an uncertain political transition and exploitative trade agreements with the northern shores of the Mediterranean, Tunisia remains one of the most food-insecure countries in the region [100]. Against this backdrop, the work of Sara Pozzi observes Tunisians’ mundane struggles around producing, processing, trading, and consuming food, interrogating how revolutionary claims were differently articulated in her informants’ quests for normal lives (ḥayāt ʿādīyya) (Figure 7). Placing food at the centre of analysis and observing the social relations it intersects with provides a lens to illuminate people’s social, moral, and political battles for social inclusion in times of major change, revealing the multiple and unstable meanings underpinning the idea of a good life and their integration with social transformation.

Building on recent scholarship discussing the Tunisian “economy of indebtedness” [101] and literature investigating how people construct good lives in situations of uncertainty [102,103,104], this account demonstrates how people’s everyday negotiations around their food affairs went beyond matters of material sufficiency or accumulation and were instead objects of ethical reflection and moral scrutiny. Through a flexible methodological approach that followed the social lives of food—specifically cereals—across their everyday relations (within families, neighbourhoods, markets, agriculture, and the state), the way people’s seemingly mundane choices around food contributed to reconstructing situated social spaces and people’s positions within them were revealed.

4.6. Health, Kinship, and the State in Scotland

Questions around sweetness and sugar have occupied a central place in the anthropology of food for decades, thanks to Sidney Mintz’s seminal work Sweetness and Power [31]. Today, sugar is also a potent object of public health scrutiny and action, and researchers have since explored how people navigate their relationships to sugar in the context of societal concerns about the links between sugar, obesity, and diabetes [105,106,107]. Contemporary approaches are often critical of the “cultures of nutrition” [108] that depoliticize sugar and render it a seemingly straightforward object to regulate.

Approaching sugar as an ethnographic object in contemporary Edinburgh, Imogen Bevan uses it as a lens through which to examine processes of kinship and relatedness [65]. She explores the relations between individual members within families and between families and the state. Finding that sugar is used to signal love and intimacy, authority and control, naughtiness and indiscipline, guilt and comfort, closeness and distance, Bevan reveals the complex and often contradictory meanings of a foodstuff and how they vary across contexts. Working across schools and homes in a demographically diverse neighbourhood, Bevan noted the way in which sugar was used as an effective tool for the socialization of children—through the promotion of responsible and conscious consumption—while also being a source of anxiety for parents who are responsible for “domesticating” public health messaging from the state.

For example, children received different messages about sugar consumption not only between home and school, or between relationships with parents, grandparents, and teachers, but also within these same places and relationships. Within a single primary school, children learned that sugar could be a public health object and a food group to avoid, a special reward or celebration, or a more mundane substance associated with pastoral care [106]. While sweets and sodas were often viewed as problematic by school staff, hot chocolate and home-baked cakes were provided in specific contexts. This depended on both the kind of school policy being enacted at that moment (aimed at improving physical health, affective well-being, or discipline and behaviour), the school setting (classroom, dining hall, and playground), and the social class background of those involved in children’s feeding. Among the children, meanwhile, sweets could be traded to solidify friendships, express belonging, or exclude others. Between kin, sugar sparked and revealed tensions surrounding responsibilities for children’s health and managing their pleasures, in a context where public health messages have come to permeate people’s homes. Food disputes between mothers and in-laws revealed how grandparents use sugar to forge close, non-authoritative special relationships with grandchildren, and their fears about grandparental ties being more fragile than parental ones. Disagreements between parents revealed deeper discord about what it means to be a caring parent and people’s ongoing navigation of gendered forms of labour.

4.7. Vegan Ethics and Activism in the United Kingdom

One concern within the anthropology of food and ethics is the relations we have with food animals—what creatures are edible under what circumstances and how we treat them [109,110]. Such relations may be explored in the context of traditional, small-scale systems of production [111] or intensive industrial farming [112]. The practice of veganism is a growing response in the United Kingdom, as elsewhere, to industrial-scale production and consumption of meat and dairy [113]. In recent decades, a visible vegan activist presence has emerged to confront the public about their meat consumption, representing a form of activism that differs from the longer-standing and more radical animal rights movement. While radical animal rights activists tend to focus on the social relations of capitalism, the vegan activist project is more focused on developing the self into a morally consistent vegan.

The research of Therese M. Kelly [114] concerns how these activists differ among themselves in their approaches to the problem of meat and its consumption and, in turn, how they differ in persuading others to turn from meat to a vegan diet. This is conducted by exploring the ethical work [115] of vegan and radical animal rights activists in Bristol, UK, through the lens of anthropology of ethics [116,117]. Kelly follows the claim that the anthropology of ethics can elucidate how subjects “make themselves”, through particular technologies of the self—strategies through which individuals create and understand their own ethics. Through these explorations, Kelly’s work raises important questions about the role of ethics in everyday life for vegan and radical animal rights activists who are seeking to tackle and change human relations with the animals we eat.

In their work, activists reflect on how they see meat-eating culture through concepts such as carnism [118], defined as “the belief system that conditions us to eat certain animals” [119], and speciesism [120], where moral worth depends solely on one’s species. Examining these narratives within their activist contexts forms an important part of how anthropologists question the cultural orthodoxy of meat consumption when it is clear that beliefs and habits around eating meat continue to change [121,122].

4.8. Sensing and Communicating Coffee in Brazil

Sensory anthropology focuses on the sensory dimensions of food, such as taste, smell, and texture, and how these experiences are connected to memory, identity, and cultural meaning [123,124,125]. The visceral, sensory nature of food makes it an ideal subject for study through a sensory anthropology lens, wherein the embodied experience of food and how it is linked to sensory perception and memory is frequently emphasized [126,127].

How do we develop our own internal “flavour lexicons”—our reference knowledge of what a specific flavour and taste is or should be? Is what I understand of a strawberry taste the same as what you understand? And is this standard or variable across cultures? Using the case of the international coffee market, Sabine Parrish examines the ways that individual knowledge of flavour varies among coffee professionals from different cultural backgrounds [128]—yet who are expected to grade and assess coffee in a standardized manner—and what impact this may have on selling coffee to international markets. For instance, most of the sensory reference tools used in professional coffee quality control settings, such as the Coffee Taster’s Flavour Wheel and Sensory Lexicon [129], are based on taste references common to North America and Western Europe but which may not reflect flavours commonly found in coffee-producing nations. This research takes forward the research of David Howes [130] on the work of sensory professionals by exploring how they are made and how they learn.

The global coffee industry is highly inequitable [131,132] and deeply rooted in legacies of colonialism and slavery. Even dominant supply-side actors like Brazil—the world’s largest coffee producer and exporter—must work to communicate what is special and unique about a given coffee and, consequently, worth a higher price from potential buyers [133]. As a form of applied sensory anthropology carried out in conjunction with a wider project involving sensory scientists, this work reveals how differences in sensory language and flavour references impact the value positioning of a coffee on the market and what strategies might better align sensory language among coffee traders to communicate the value and characteristics of a given coffee.

4.9. Fermenting the Posthuman in Barcelona

The Anthropocene, the current geological period in which humans are the primary force shaping and impacting planetary changes, has become an important ethnographic backdrop and object of anthropological inquiry in its own right [134,135]. The setting of the Anthropocene, which calls for an understanding of human impact on the world, has also occasioned an interest in human impacts on and our relationships and entanglements with non-human entities, or the shape of our multispecies interrelatedness. Interspecies perspectives in anthropology frequently consider elements of the natural world, such as plants, animals, and microbes, but those linked with food are still scarce [136], as contemporary anthropology of food is rather centred on the human subject [137].

Fermentation practices, wherein microbes play a crucial role in food preservation, are found in cultures across the globe and are a vivid example of the ways in which humans are entwined with other species through food [138,139,140]. Moving from the results of her previous research [141], Aranza Begueria uses urban food activism centred around fermentation as a political and artistic practice that pushes back on local and global environmental and societal crises in Barcelona, Spain. There, fermentation is not only a healthy consumer trend but also a tool used by activists and artists to engage multispecies relations, confront the challenges of local and global crises, activate groups and initiatives of community care and urban experimentation, and create spaces for debates on political and economic issues such as food sovereignty, globalization, feminism, or the uses of urban space, among others (Figure 8). Several artists also use metaphors of the fermentation process to reflect on broader issues such as death, care, affect, and social normativity. By situating this research within a lens of posthumanism—a philosophical stance that decentres the human being from social analysis to focus on the social relevance of spaces, objects, temporalities, technologies, and both organic and inorganic beings [142]—we can begin to reflect on/situate the anthropology of food within the context of multispecies relationships in the Anthropocene.

5. Conclusions

This article has presented an overview of the development of major theories and trends in the sub-discipline of the anthropology of food, a critical object of inquiry in the anthropological endeavour of understanding the beliefs, actions, and organization of human cultures across the globe. Studies of food played important roles in providing ethnographic support to the development of anthropological theories and approaches within functionalist, structuralist, and materialist schools. The study of food and feeding practices has also been key to examining gender norms and understanding the division of labour across cultures. The study of food through approaches grounded in political economy has helped us understand recent and current processes of globalization and neoliberalism, as well as issues pertaining to sustainability, activism, and cultural heritage.

The case studies presented herein were drawn from anthropological research on food cultures, customs, and practices in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, revealing not only the global relevance of the anthropology of food but also the diversity of approaches and theories therein. From ethics to the senses, human to more-than-human, from making to doing, exchanging, relating, and eating, food is everywhere in our daily lives no matter where we are in the world, and it is a useful mirror through which to understand others—and ourselves.

This contribution does not presume to define the entirety of the field of study and new discussions are opening. However, it sketches its contours so that anyone approaching it may begin to navigate and orient themselves for future studies and discoveries in the ever-changing reality of the food system.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, S.P. (Sabine Parrish) and M.F.F.; methodology, M.F.F.; investigation: §3 M.F.F., §4.1 J.L.T., §4.2 J.M.L., §4.3 T.C., §4.4 M.R., §4.5 S.P. (Sara Pozzi), §4.6 I.B., §4.7 T.M.K., §4.8 S.P. (Sabine Parrish), and §4.9 A.B.; writing—original draft preparation, S.P. (Sabine Parrish) (§4, 5) and M.F.F. (§1, 2, 3).; writing—review and editing, all the authors.; visualization, M.F.F.; supervision, S.P. (Sabine Parrish) and M.F.F.; funding acquisition, M.F.F. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Gastronomic Sciences (protocol code 5/2020, 4 December 2020). The research was conducted according to the ethical guidelines of the American Anthropological Association (Principles of Professional Responsibility). In this article, the names of the research participants, their sensitive data, as well as the names of places have been anonymized.

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

The datasets presented in this article are not available because of their ethnographic nature and the need for participant privacy.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Footnotes

Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.

Figures

Figure 1. A visual summary of the research design (visualization: MFF 2024).

Figure 2. Roots and herbs consumed for medicinal practices amongst First Nations People (Photo by Francois Du Plessis in Kalk Bay, South Africa, 2023).

Figure 3. Participants preparing a medicinal drink before a healing ritual. (Photo by Francois Du Plessis in Blanco, South Africa, 2023).

Figure 4. Participant preparing !Nara seeds after the pulp has been rendered. (Photo by: Francois Du Plessis in Gobabeb, Namibia 2023).

Figure 5. ‘Tortilla style’ in a plantain life (Photo by Meija López, Honduras, 2021).

Figure 6. Participants prepare chilies and herbs for drying at a Food Preservation Workshop affiliated with the Eco-Imagining Project. Principal Investigators: Prof. L. Manderson (University of the Witwatersrand) and Prof. E.M. Moyer (University of Amsterdam). Photo by Memory Reid, Johannesburg, South Africa 2024.

Figure 7. Couscous drying for the annual food stock. (Photo taken by Pozzi, Tunisia 2024).

Figure 8. Participants at a fermentation festival (Photograph taken by Begueria, Spain 2024).

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