[Culinary art and social change: some remarks].

The development in France, long a rural country, of a new type of civilization characterized by industrialization, urbanisation and their corollaries threatens (in a real or imaginary way) both the quality of food (standardization, agricultural, industrialization and new toxicological and pollution problems) and the social-cultural signification of the meal (time constraints, convenience food, fast-food restaurants, etc.) particularly among social strata most involved in the new urban way of life. And yet a new interest and appreciation for cooking and culinary art spreads. Gastronomy can be regarded as a social privilege and/or a celebrative break in the course of ordinary meals: the new culinary vogue might well develop in opposition to--rather than in spite of--the onslaught of convenience food. Significantly enough, it is based on a new mythology and, as a consequence, on new aesthetic canons. The new food emphasizes the signs of nature, archaïsm, rurality, exotism (ethnic food) etc. It is also bound to conciliate the art of food and the image of the body imposed by contemporary culture (slimness, eternal youth...).