ABSTRACT
Introduction: food choice, culture and cuisine The first question faced by a sociologist or social anthropologist about food choice is whether, and where, it is a choice at all. Fischler (1988) has made much of the existential dilemma created by man's omnivorous capacity, which imposes the necessity of choice. But this is a dilemma from which we may be delivered by culture. By storing up hunting, gathering, agricultural or trading knowledge, by organising production, by elaborating the meaning attached to meals, and by making available a stock of recipes for converting the raw into the cooked, while avoiding the further hazard of consuming the rotten (Lévi-Strauss 1965), culture creates the basis of a cuisine (Goody 1982).
