Customer Reviews

Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and Society

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This book provides an overview of many topics in the sociology of food and eating. It is organized topically into chapters, and each chapter reviews the relevant literature for the area in question. Featured topics include: early human diets, eating out, food and community, conceptions of diet, food risks, body image, meat diets, vegetarian diets, and the role of sugar. Overall, it is an impressive work of scholarship and it would make a good reading text for a course on food sociology. However, a few of the chapters tend to be a little broad, and refer to the literature more than explain or summarize other authors' work. The book is written by British-based authors, who naturally tend to focus on British statistics and research. This may disappoint American readers who would like more statistics that are particularly relevant to them. The entire book is written in a rather small font, which can be a bit tiresome at times, but without the small font, it doubtless would have been a much more massive volume.

Beardsworth and Keil explains us how (in a sociological context) the food systems is created. First, making emphasis on human biological nourishment, continuing with the comparison and construction of traditional and modern food systems. After that, they points out the importance (in western mentality) of body, health and food and how this have been reflected in health, e.g. obesity, health movements and discourse.