New Approaches in Gastronomy

Various concepts such as food types, food production, preservation and storage, consumption methods and rituals have been a source of interest for all human and social sciences. Because meeting people's nutritional needs is influential on and also influenced by many factors such as traditions, customs, beliefs, life styles and modes of conducting business. Today, all of the economic and social systems are essentially based on meeting the nutritional needs of people. That is, the disappearance of the hunter-gatherer way of life, and the transition to settled life and the emergence of communities were all brought about by nutritional needs. People coming together for producing food brought about the division of labor, which in turn created the social layers and societies. Acquiring the food they cannot produce from others led to the emergence of bartering, and the advent of money led to trade. Therefore, any research conducted on nutrition revealed extensive information about all the phases of humankind, in other words, it allowed a better understanding of human and society.

The increasing number of studies on nutrition has concentrated researches around the phenomenon of gastronomy. In the following years, gastronomic research has transitioned food from the simple human-society-nutrition triangle into a philosophical and aesthetic dimension. Thus, gastronomy started to be defined as a science and art. Carrying all the effects a form of science and art should have enables gastronomy to influence and be influenced by all its associated concepts. In order to understand the phenomenon of gastronomy, it is necessary to clarify the said relations and to examine the developing trends and approaches.