Abstract: To grasp the meaning of today's food studies, one has to go back to the beginnings of the interest in food culture and history of anthropologists and historians since 1980 both in China and in the West. Thanks to inspiration from the late Prof. Ji Hongkun who had for years led the struggle for the recognition of food science and culture as a respectable academic domain, two perspectives to approaching research on food can be highlighted. The first emphasizes long-lasting meanings of food systems and cultures, and the other deals with the relationships between food, culture and society, considering food essentially as a lens or a tool. What are exactly the role and definition of the so-called “food studies” between these two perspectives in a time when the whole world is food-oriented?

Key words: food study, food culture, food science