The staggering increase in the scale of food literature—inside and outside
anthropology—makes bibliographic coverage challenging, a challenge compounded
by the close intertwining of food and eating with so many other subjects.
We posit that three major trends this last quarter century or so have influenced
this growth: globalization; the general affluence of Western societies and their
growing cosmopolitanism; and the inclusivist tendencies of U.S. society, which
spurs even disciplines (and professions, such as journalism and business) without
anthropology’s strong inclusivist ethic to consider cross-cultural variations in
foodways