The Anthropological Dimension of Food Culture: Philosophical Reflection on Eating Practices in a Globalized World

Abstract

The article explores the anthropological dimension of contemporary food culture, analyzing eating practices as a space for shaping subjectivity, moral orientations, and cultural meaning in a globalized world. It demonstrates that food practices go beyond biological necessity and constitute a complex cultural text where rituals, traditions, symbolism, and bodily experience intersect. Special attention is given to the Jewish food tradition, where kosher laws create “embodied ethics,” integrating spiritual values into everyday practices. The analysis of secular ethical practices, including vegetarianism and veganism, shows that food choices often act as moral and symbolic gestures of responsibility toward the world, humans, and non-human life. The study emphasizes the role of globalization in transforming food culture: local cuisines and traditions interact with global flows, generating new forms of cultural resistance, identity, and self-expression. The bodily dimension of eating practices is highlighted as essential for direct engagement with the world, forming stable patterns of behavior and perception. Methodologically, the research draws on interdisciplinary approaches from philosophy, anthropology, and food studies, particularly the works of Appadurai, Ingold, Biesta, Kaplan, Fernández-Armesto, Fuchs, Müller, Richardson, and Halbertal. The findings indicate that gastronomy constitutes a critical space for philosophical and anthropological reflection, where corporeality, symbolism, morality, and social structures intersect, and food practices construct new boundaries of human existence.