ABSTRACT
Just as the study of consumption has increasingly come to the fore analytically over the past two decades, so has the study of food consumption. Despite frequent claims of neglect, it has been far from starved. The references in the survey of Mennell et al. (1992) run to well over 500 items. To this must be added the wellestablished disciplines around agrarian studies, marketing, psychology and, at the immediate policy level, health and nutrition. Economists and historians have long been concerned with food supply and demand. There is no shortage of academic literature and, within the more popular media, there is no end to discussion of dieting and cooking. A number of developments, some theoretical and some empirical, have pushed food studies into even greater prominence. Consumption in general has been elevated within the confines of postmodernism to the forefront of contemporary social theory. Concern with the environment, the quality of food and the diseases of affluence have been important in promoting food as an object both of popular concern and, increasingly, of scholarship.
