The interest of social sciences and humanities for food developed almost simultaneously in English and French speaking worlds, but in different ways. From the 2000s, a movement called food studies develops in the Anglo-Saxon world, which operates on the model of “cultural studies” a multidisciplinary thematic focus. In contrast, the European approach, including French, favours a perspective open to interdisciplinary but disciplinary anchored. This article landmark three disciplinary complexes centred on socio-anthropology, history and geography and agriculture. It analyse the internal and external dynamics at work behind this rapid theming of the research on socio-cultural aspects of food. He studies the relationships that develop between “food studies” and the different approaches rooted in disciplinary, complementary games, competitions, but also the risks and epistemological issues of this two ways of development.