ABSTRACT
One of the most effective ways of assessing which topics or issues are generally regarded as fundamental to a given discipline is to survey the contents of that discipline’s standard introductory textbooks. In such hallowed volumes are enshrined, if only in their most basic form, those principles, theories and doctrines which are deemed essential for all recruits to master. However, scanning the contents pages of the wide range of introductory sociology texts available leads to an inevitable conclusion: alongside the themes which, in various guises, occur again and again (stratification, work and employment, crime and deviance, ethnicity, gender, the family, etc.) you will not come across food and eating as a specifically identified focus of interest. If such issues are addressed at all, they usually appear on the margins of one or more of the central themes.
