Animal‐source food consumption is considered a key element in studying and characterising shifts in food diets. But it is most often studied from the macro‐nutritional and macro‐economic perspectives of the ‘nutrition transition’ model. This article advocates the need for a socio‐anthropological examination of the animal‐source food consumption, involved in the transition phenomena. Based on a review of the literature on two different cases (India and France) our study sheds light on social and cultural factors of ‘de‐animalisation’ processes, and advocates an alternative approach to transitions in food. This has led us to examine different forms of animal‐source food consumption and their evolutions at smaller social scales, taking into account sociocultural factors such as the symbolic dimensions of food, the eaters' viewpoints, the processes of sociocultural differentiation, the sociocultural identities, the contexts of choice and consumption or the role of critical reflexivity in the evolution of diets, particularly in the phenomena of ‘de‐animalisation’. Finally, this article raises a number of further questions for researchers interested in the issue of diet transition process.