1. General presentation

"Food embraces the entire history of our civilization" (Massimo Montanari, )

From birth, eating becomes a fundamental act of survival for every human being. For hundreds of thousands of years, it has occupied most of mankind's waking hours. It then accompanied the slow progress of technology and the arts, and, much more recently in history, of the economy. The emergence of the first civilizations, some 5 or 6,000 years ago, largely revolved around food practices, both socially (the banquet), culturally (the arts of the table) and economically (the land as a source of wealth). Having all but solved the terrible problem of famine in times of peace, mankind set out to diversify...