In 2015, Estudios de Asia y África entered the fiftieth year of its publication. Throughout these years, the journal has been an important source for the publication, in Spanish, of significant research in humanities and social sciences as well as political science and economics concerning Asia and Africa. In compliance with international academic standards, articles submitted to the journal undergo a thorough process of peer-review. To commemorate our fiftieth anniversary, we have decided to offer important and pertinent work on an engaging theme that has relevance for all societies of Asia and Africa, in a special number. The effort is to make the journal even more attractive to a wide variety of readers.

This anniversary edition explores a subject that is vital for human existence: food and cooking. Although not taken up seriously so far in academic publications such as ours, "food studies" have gained enormous influence in the past decade and have aroused the interest of historians and anthropologists, economists and geographers, and literary and cultural studies specialists. Food and nutrition are no longer considered to be the exclusive reserve of cultural anthropologists; they have created a niche for themselves in the academic arena with contributions of specialists from different disciplines and interdisciplinary studies.

The title of this issue, Culinary Cultures: Food and Society in Asia and Africa, gives a clear picture of its scope. Guest editor Ishita Banerjee, professor at the Center for Asian and African Studies (CEAA), El Colegio de México, has long been passionate about the theme and is taking it up as the major focus of her research. She has invited an outstanding array of specialists in culinary studies on Asia and Africa. The issue offers innovative insights on food, politics and affect, food, nationalism, and gender, and the various appropriations of the metaphor of food in the construction of colonial and modern cuisine and the standardization of food. We sincerely hope that this number will be of great interest and value for the readers.