ABSTRACT
The consumption of food, like the satisfying of any appetite, has long since ceased to be about nutrition and has come instead to contain myriad social, cultural and symbolic meanings. In the consumer dominated societies of the industrialized era, every conceivable human idea, cultural practice and material substance seems to have been transformed by ‘market forces’ into desirable commodities to be pursued and possessed. The consumer society puts everything up for sale and food has been no exception. This makes the desire for food not a simple matter of meeting basic nutritional needs, but part of a social discourse in which personal and collective identities are defined and presented. Food has thus been thoroughly transformed into symbol, icon, trope, sign and status.
