The history of man’s relationship with food is one of the most fascinating social and cultural epics of all time, and a fascinating side of human history: “eating” has strong cultural implications where, when we speak of culture, we mean the experience of community life that creates the substratum of original conceptual and esthetic developments. The cultural experience of the societies that populate the Mediterranean shores, where food is one of the most original unifying elements, uniting them in diversity – that is Mediterranean-ness.

The history of man's relationship with food is an extraordinary social and cultural epic. From the discovery of fire that, to quote Levi Strauss “made human beings human”, to the development of national culinary identities that, according to Rozin, represent the nutritional wisdom of the respective cultures, food is the authentic evidence at every latitude of an ongoing evolutionary process. The document synthetically and effectively covers all the aspects of study of man's relationship with food, focusing in particular on the novel elements (demands of functionality and authenticity of food, definition of dietary styles) that characterize our times and our culture.