Food and Weather Studies – un champ de recherche en voie de constitution. Special issue of Food & History (original) (raw)

2020, Food & History. Revue de l'Institut Européen d'Histoire de l'Alimentation

Keywords Food, Meteorology, Climate, Agriculture, Subsistence crisis, Famine, Dietetics, Coenaesthesis, Seasons, Cookbooks The study of the interrelationship between food and weather is a relatively new field of study. Until a few years ago the interdependence between atmospheric conditions and food production, preparation, and consumption was only occasionally researched – with a rather lopsided focus on the impact of the weather on harvests. However, recently a more systematic approach seems to be gaining momentum. This is leading, on the one hand, to a growing focus on the study of extreme weather circumstances and concomitant subsistence crises. Such anomalies and their often-catastrophic consequences – such as scarcity and famines – are now frequently explored in the context of the “Little Ice Age” that affected Europe between the thirteenth and nineteenth century. On the other hand, the influence of the weather on the food supply chain, as well as on the food habits of consumers who adapt their actual food choices to meteorological conditions, such as temperature and humidity, is gradually being discovered by researchers. The study of the close link between food systems, atmospheric conditions and individuals conditioned by the latter (a phenomenon known as “meteo-sensibility” or coenaesthesis) represents a new approach that offers us a better understanding of the two “total facts” that determine humankind in its attempts to come to terms with its environment and to reconcile nature and culture. http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod\_id=IS-9782503582634-1