The four ages of food
Food consumption in a globalized world

L. Malassis (, pp. 35-71) describes the three ages of food as follows:

• the pre-agricultural or gathering age, characterized by the harvesting of "wild" foods from natural ecosystems, dating back to the beginning of hominization, around three million years ago;

• the agricultural age, marked by the "domestication" of animal and plant species for food purposes, within the framework of "agro-systems" and initiated some five to ten thousand years ago, depending on the region;

• the agro-industrial age, with the emergence one or two centuries ago of mass production of processed foods by specialized companies,...