Humans have an appetite for food, and anthropology-- as the study of human beings, their culture, and society-- has an interest in the role of food. From ingredients and recipes to meals and menus across time and space, Eating Culture is an overview that illustrates the important role that anthropology and anthropologists have played in understanding food. Organized around the sometimes elusive concept of cuisine and the public discourse - on gastronomy, nutrition, sustainability, and culinary skills - that surrounds it, this practical guide to anthropological method and theory brings order and insight to our changing relationship with food.

Introduction: setting the anthropological table --Part 1. Edibility -- Omnivorousness: defining food -- Part 2. Ingredients -- Settled ingredients: domestic food production -- Mobile ingredients: global food production -- Part 3. Cooking -- Cooks and kitchens -- Recipes and dishes -- Part 4. Eating -- Eating-in: commensality and gastro-politics -- Eating-out and gastronomy -- Part 5. Digesting -- Gastro-anomie: global indigestion -- Local digestion: making the global at home -- Epilogue: leftovers to takeaway.