Methodological approaches on the studies of food practices

Abstract

Human nutrition is a very complex phenomenon as it invites at the same time the physiology, the psychology and the socio-cultural. That's also why food practice measures have caused the development of tools and methodologies within several disciplines. This article presents the approach of sociology and anthropology. It defines first of all the different dimensions of the social food space; from the eatable order to the process of social differentiation via the culinary, the consumption forms and the temporality. It analyses in detail the data types which can be used taking care in distinguishing the behavioural data that can be obtained either by observation or by declaration from the representation data. It presents the different collect tools and the ways of entry in the food phenomenon. These methodological tools built within a sociological theoretical framing are proposed to the researchers engaged in the study of the food facts so as to walk towards a pooling likely to result on a multi-field approach.