Research Guides: Food Studies: Research Databases

Food Studies Research Databases

Select a research database to search for journal articles.

Bloomsbury Food Library
Bloomsbury Food Library offers cross-searchable access to a range of encyclopedias, references works, e-books, and images. Search across numerous ebooks, and key reference works such as Ken Albala’s Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia, the Cambridge World History of Food, Bloomsbury’s Cultural History of Food, and chapters from Food History: Critical and Primary Sources. Explore image collections from institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA.
Food Studies Online
Food Studies Online includes visual, text, and video materials for food studies, including documentaries, over 5,000 pages of ephemeral materials from the turn of the century through the 1960s, menus from the New York Public Library and Los Angeles Public Library menu collections, and government documents related to food campaigns during WWII and to the US school lunch program.
Food and Drink in History
From feast to famine, explore five centuries of primary source material documenting the story of food and drink throughout history. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics and power, gender, race and socio-economic status, as well as charting key issues around agriculture, nutrition and food production.
AtoZ World Food
The AtoZ World Food database contains information on national cuisine, food culture, recipes and ingredients from most countries.
Food Science and Technology Abstracts (FSTA)
Food Science and Technology Abstracts (FSTA) contains abstracts for scientific and technological literature relating to food, drink, and nutrition. FSTA covers journals, books, trade publications, reviews, conference proceedings, reports, patents, and standards dating from 1969 to the present.
AGRICOLA Articles (NAL)
AGRICOLA (AGRICultural OnLine Access) serves as the catalog and index to the collections of the National Agricultural Library, including journal articles, book chapters, short reports, and reprints as far back as the 15th century.
Agricultural & Environmental Science Database
This database includes AGRICOLA, TOXLINE, ESPM (Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management) and Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) databases and provides full-text titles from around the world, including scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings, and government publications. This database includes specialized, editorially-curated A&I resources covering such topics as the effects of pollution on people and animals and environmental action and policy responses.

Feast Afrique is a celebration of West African culinary heritage curated by Ozoz Sokoh - The Kitchen Butterfly.

This library currently lists 240+ books and collections, referenced in The Jemima Code and more, from 1828 to the present day. The Jemima Code (2015) by Toni Tipton-Martin widened knowledge of the wealth of resources documenting the culinary excellence of West Africans and African-Americans. These books can be accessed via The Internet Archive (to read, click ‘borrow’ and you’ll see options. You might need to register), HathiTrust, The National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine etc. These collections represent the African, African-American and African-Inspired culinary knowledge are not often acknowledged in culinary practice. This digital library also contains Nigerian and West African cookbooks, many are out-of-print titles

NYU Business Library

The Business Library offers numerous databases to support research in all aspects of business: company financial information, industry and marketing reports, and business-oriented scholarship.

NYU Business Library

A few food business and enterprise related databases are given below:

Mintel Academic
Mintel Reports offers research reports covering European, UK, and US consumer markets. The reports analyse market drivers, sizes and trends, market segmentation, along with consumer attitudes and purchasing habits. The reports are supplemented by brief digests of relevant recent events and UK and US demographic and economic statistics.

Requires Net ID and password on and off-campus.
Mintel GNPD
Mintel GNPD (Global New Products Database) monitors worldwide product innovation and new product activity in consumer packaged goods markets. It covers food, drink, household, beauty & personal care, healthcare, and pets. GNPD allows you to screen hundreds of thousands of products by country, category, packaging, price, and other features. GNPD's analytical tools are helpful for analyzing trends in product claims, ingredients, and packaging, in addition to identifying competing products.

Requires Net ID and password on and off-campus.
MarketResearch.com Academic
MarketResearch provides access to market research reports and industry analysis.
IBISWorld
IBIS World is a comprehensive collection of industry market research.

Requires NetID and password on and off-campus.

Other Relevant Databases

JSTOR
JSTOR provides access to scholarly journals, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. In addition to journal articles, users can access book chapters, ebooks, and primary source documents.
Anthropology Plus
Anthropology Plus indexes core journals plus local and lesser-known journals in social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology; ethnology, archaeology, folklore, and material culture; and interdisciplinary studies. Users can search both Anthropological Index and Anthropological Literature. Dates of coverage: Anthropological Index (1957 to present); Anthropological Literature (early 19th century to present) .
America: History and Life with Full Text
Indexes literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes 1,700 journals and also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages. Publication dates of coverage: 1964 to present.
SocINDEX with Full Text
SocINDEX covers the sociology literature, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study. It indexes scholarly journals, books, monographs, and conference papers.
ABI/INFORM
ABI/INFORM features full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business, and economics periodicals. Researchers can locate country- and industry-focused reports, and its international focus provides a picture of companies and business trends around the world.
Business Source Complete
Business Source Complete is a full text database of articles from popular, scholarly, and trade publications. Subjects covered include management, economics, finance, accounting, international business. Dates of coverage: 1886 to present.

Search Tips

When using article databases, remember there are always three stages in your workflow:

Discovery: Do and redo your searches! Do a keyword or keyphrase search, scan the results, and figure out if you can do a better search using more focused terms, synonyms, and/or by using the Boolean operators "and, or, not" to get good results. Your first search is not your best search, but rather an opportunity to learn how to immediately do a better search. Learn more about Boolean searching here.
Delivery: For items that you like, select the link to the full text if available. If the citation does not include the full text, use the icon to see if we own the full text in another database. If you want to keep this item, save it to your own computer, email it to yourself, or print it.
Document: Keep track of the search terms you've used and a running bibliography of all that good resources you found. If you want to create your own library, NYU Libraries offer a number of citation management tools that you can learn more about. These tools are like research shadows - you can save the metadata of the resources you find there, and they will help you create a bibliography as you write a paper. They require habit to use though!