Paul Aries, in twelve chapters, designed like the various services of a table, retraces a political history of food explaining "what eating means" from the point of view of the constitution of a society, its relations power, domination, etc. (First Service: the prehistoric tables, Second Service: the Mesopotamian table, Third Service: the Egyptian table, Fourth Service: the Greek table, Fifth Service: the Roman table, Sixth Service: the Gallic table, Seventh Service: the Merovingian table, Eighth Service: the Carolingian table, Ninth Service: the clerical-feudal table, Tenth Service: the table of the absolute monarchy, Eleventh Service: the republican table, Twelfth Service: the bourgeois table and in Exit from the table the great food utopias).