Food is a multidimensional object. It has a nutritional dimension, which is essential for human survival; it has a social dimension – the entire domain of food is organized by social structures and relations and organizes them; it has an economic aspect; and it has a cultural aspect – human food behavior is organized by culture and plays an important role in the representation of collective identities. Food embodies various relations: between nature, society, and culture; between matter and spirit; between large-scale social, economic, and political processes and individual bodies; between human groups and social spaces. All these make food a fascinating yet highly complex research object.
This article focuses on the scholarship on food in Israel. It points at the central issues discussed and offers directions for future research. Delineating the central theoretical approaches to the sociocultural study of food, it suggests that studying a complex object such as food requires an approach that integrates cultural factors with economic, political, and ecological ones.
