The Practice of the Meal

Food, Families and the Market Place

Benedetta Cappellini, David Marshall, Elizabeth Parsons

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317595649
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Consumer Behaviour
• Index: Business

Reflecting a growing interest in consumption practices, and particularly relating to food, this cross disciplinary volume brings together diverse perspectives on our (often taken for granted) domestic mealtimes.

By unpacking the meal as a set of practices - acquisition, appropriation, appreciation and disposal - it shows the role of the market in such processes by looking at how consumers make sense of marketplace discourses, whether this is how brand discourses influence shopping habits, or how consumers interact with the various spaces of the market. Revealing food consumption through both material and symbolic aspects, and the role that marketplace institutions, discourses and places play in shaping, perpetuating or transforming them, this holistic approach reveals how consumer practices of 'the meal', and the attendant meaning-making processes which surround them, are shaped.

This wide-ranging collection will be of great interest to a wide range of scholars interested in marketing, consumer behaviour and food studies, as well as the sociology of both families and food.

1 Introduction

The practice of the meal

David Marshall, Benedetta Cappellini and Elizabeth Parsons

Among the many cookery programmes that currently crowd our television screens is Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals. Here the ubiquitous celebrity chef Jamie Oliver conjures up tasty treats speedily, effortlessly and with plenty of style. The viewer is treated to a whirlwind of high energy cooking resulting in a meal which is a feast for the eyes and (we are led to believe) the taste buds. We highlight this particular show because it is a good example of a much wider popular media obsession with cookery skill, style and aesthetics. Often hidden is the highly necessary work of planning, shopping, preparing, disposing of unwanted food and cleaning up afterwards. Also rendered invisible are the systems of provision that make an array of (arguably exotic) ingredients available to the average consumer. In fact, watching Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals we felt utterly cheated, aside from the cost of the ingredients and small size of the portions (certainly not big enough to feed a family of four) where did he get the ingredients? How long did the shopping take? And what about the time spent in preparation and washing up? Not to mention, who is looking after the children? While there are a whole host of texts which individually explore each of these aspects of the meal we found little recent work that takes a holistic view of consumer practices across the meal provisioning cycle (Warde, 2010; Marshall, 1995; Goody, 1982). Exploring consumer practice across the different stages of acquisition, appropriation, appreciation and disposal allows us to look beyond the acts of cooking and eating and to reflect on how consumers engage in what are a whole host of other mundane often taken-for-granted activities. Our aim however is not merely to reveal the everyday work of the meal (indeed this has been done excellently elsewhere – see for example DeVault, 1994) our additional focus is to examine the intersection of these practices with the marketplace. We explore how consumer engagement in, and understanding of, these practices is shaped by marketplace discourses and institutions.

Food consumption and the market

The Practice of the Meal is a celebration of thinking around the bundle of consumption practices centred on, what for many Western consumers is an everyday activity, creating and eating meals. US households spend around 7 per cent of total household income on food or $43 per person per week (The Economist, 2013), UK households spend 11.4 per cent of household spend or an average of £42.18 per week on food and drink, of which around onethird goes on eating out (DEFRA, 2014). Expenditure across European households averages 14.5 per cent but is up to 30 per cent in parts of Eastern Europe. But eating and drinking goes far beyond household expenditure and in order to understand this consumption practice we need to look at the time and effort engaged in food-related activities from acquiring, preparing, cooking and eating through to the disposal of food across the food provisioning cycle (Warde, 2010; Marshall, 1995; Goody, 1982). All of the stages have to be ‘performed’ but in contemporary societies we begin to see a new focus on the earlier stages of the process with concerns about how food is sourced and procured, how it is processed and the various activities surrounding its production pre- and post-farm gate as well as concerns over the sustainability and environmental impact (Barber, 2014). These issues have become an integral part of food policy in an increasingly ‘ecological public health approach’ to food (Lang, Barling, & Caraher, 2009) that influences both what is made available to consumers and what they choose to eat. We can add to this the debates about local food supply, community farms, and alternative food networks that are shaping how we think about food supply, or consider changing household structures and the continued dependence on women in full time work that place different challenges on each of the food provisioning stages, through to the concerns about growing demand for food and food waste and pollution that are reshaping how we consume. We see these concerns reflected in consumer practice, for example around initiatives to reduce food waste, source from sustainable suppliers, or pay for plastic shopping bags. Some of these practices are driven by legislation, others by individual choices in response to changing beliefs or austerity (see for example, Cappellini, Marilli, & Parsons, 2014). On another level we see evidence of new technologies in the home and food industry changing how people prepare and cook food, from greater use of ready prepared foods and meals through to sous vide products that promise new taste experiences. The demand for diversity, the need for convenience or better quality has not gone away – government and the food industry constantly face new challenges. Where there are choices, and not every household has a choice, consumers can elect to act more sustainably, or economise, or indulge themselves. But these choices are not always clear and are often contradictory; as Alan Warde (1997) notes there are a series of antinomies of taste that include novelty and tradition, health and indulgence, economy and extravagance, convenience and care that contribute to our understanding of the complexity around food consumption and expressions of taste that represent dilemmas of contemporary practice. In this text we consider how these practices are played out across the food provisioning process by focusing on the meal and considering key discourses that relate to and illuminate each of these different stages.

Our interest is in how these practices are influenced by, and in turn influence, the commercial market. As food provisioning is increasingly ‘marketised’ how is consumer practice driven by producers, manufacturers, processors and distributors? How are consumers reacting and responding to what is, in essence, a highly industrialised food system (Moss, 2013; Ochs & Beck, 2013; Blythman, 2006; Schlosser, 2002; Klein, 2000)? While some yearn for a romantic notion of returning to the land and producing our own food, for most urban and rural dwellers this is simply not practical. There are some great alternative food outlets, fantastic community food scheme initiatives and farmers markets but few households can exist solely on these sources for sustenance. What is clear is the extent to which industrial food supply is omnipresent; there is no getting away from it. The first thing is to acknowledge our reliance on the food industry and work to improve the quality and healthfulness of the food we eat, the second is to ensure that affordable good quality healthful food is available to all, and the third, to ensure that in producing good food resources and people are not exploited. This is what books like Moss’s do, they generate a discussion about how our food is produced, processed and marketed (see also Blythman, 2006). What this all adds up to is convenience and the ‘heat and serve’ foods of the middle of the last century were seen as a great advancement saving the ‘housewife’ from endless chores (Carrigan, Szmigin, & Leek, 2006).

This book is not necessarily intended as a critique of our food system or a comment of food policy – although these issues will emerge in the course of the book – rather a reflection on contemporary food systems and an examination of how consumers are contributing through their practices to the commercial (re)construction of the food system and (re)interpretation of mealtimes. Meals, and mealtimes, involve a wide range of eating activities from the festive through to the everyday family dinner. They involve debates around food and nutrients, food availability and access, preparation and cooking skills, family structures and female employment, as well as existing and new technologies that contribute to the manufacture, storage and cooking of foods that go into the meal. This is a complex multi-faceted system and one that requires us to consider meals and food choice more broadly, from a range of disciplinary perspectives.

Mealtimes

‘The term “meal” refers both to foods that are ingested and to the encompassing social arrangements of an event involving locations, times and companions, reflecting the empirically observed interconnection between occasions and the foods served’ (Yates & Warde, 2015). As these authors note, the practice of meals is about selecting foods, combining them into an acceptable sequence appropriate for the occasion. While the structural approach adopted by researchers like Douglas (1975, also Douglas & Nicod, 1974) may be seen as too rigid to capture the complexity of the meal and its various nuances, it does provide the basis on which to construct a hierarchy of meals that reflects the nature of the occasion (Cappellini & Parsons, 2012; Marshall, 2005). Yet, changing work patterns and market forces have converged to alter the social organisation, content and practice of eating (Yates & Warde, 2015; Warde et al., 2007). Despite these changes the orthodox pattern of three meals per day remains prevalent in Britain although differences can be seen over the previous 50 years in the nature of the domestic meal. Meals are becoming restructured, simpler, and more likely to be eaten alone, reflecting changes in domestic food practices (Gatley, Caraher, & Lang, 2014).

The family dinner

Despite the aforementioned changes in domestic food practices, one of the most enduring modes of eating meals is undoubtedly the family dinner. Why is family dinner, that quintessential meal, a challenge for contemporary families? In addition to work demands, children’s extracurricular activities and scheduling conflicts it seems that even when families are together the abundance of convenience foods, individualised meals and snacks contrive to usurp the family meal. Despite this, over three-quarters of (American) families manage to eat dinner together at least one evening a week and while only one-fifth ate all dinners together¹ the majority of these involved one or more family members. In contrast almost a quarter of the families never ate together and a high proportion of dinners eaten at different times or in different rooms involved convenience or takeaway foods, like chicken nuggets, or ready dishes with processed convenience accompaniments. This reliance on commercially prepared convenience foods is exemplified by the now ubiquitous ‘home-cooked’ dinner (Atlantic, 2013). All meals, it seems are not made equally. Could convenience be the latest threat to the family meal?

The Atlantic article, based on Ochs and Beck’s (2013) anthropological account of family dinners in American and Italian families, suggests that this demise of the family meal begins in the supermarket with large-scale purchases of packaged convenience foods and reflects differences in the domestic environment. Italian families have smaller refrigerators and purchase food more infrequently using neighbourhood stores (we assume stocking similar items to the supermarkets!). In contrast American families stockpile food leading to an abundance of convenience foods that facilitates snacking and encourages family members to eat at different times and in different places. Moreover, the focus on health over taste is apparent in the discourse around the table, reflecting broader cultural differences between the US and Europe (Ochs & Beck, 2013; Blythman, 2006; Rozin, Fischler, Imada, Sarubin, & Wrzesniewski, 1999). Educating families about the health benefits of eating meals together can be seen in a series of British government initiatives² aimed at getting families to buy, cook and eat healthier food (McArdle, 2015). Ochs and Beck question the extent to which convenience foods and ready meals may actually help us to recreate the formal mealtime (without the time and effort – see Hallsworth, 2013). Underpinning this is an ongoing debate around the alleged demise of the family meal as part of a broader moral debate (Jackson, 2009; Meiselman, 2009; Murcott, 1982, 2012). However, the debate has been somewhat focused on meals at home with much less work on meals eaten outside the home (Warde & Martens, 2000).

Mealtimes as consumption practice

Theories of practice have recently become popular in consumer research (Boulaire & Cova, 2013; Echeverri & Skålén, 2011; Halkier, Katz-Gerro, & Martens, 2011; Watson & Shove, 2008; Warde, 2005). They have been used as a way to shift emphasis away from the consuming subject to embrace more fully the ways in which collective/shared understandings of consumption, as well as the material stuff of consumption, shape the way in which that consumption proceeds (Southerton, 2006; Shove & Pantzar, 2005). In this respect consumption may be best seen as embedded in particular practices (Warde, 2005). Moreover, practices have also been used as a way to explore the more macro shaping of consumption through the operation of marketplace discourses (Halkier, Katz-Gerro, & Martens, 2011; Warde, 2005). As ‘routinised types of behavior’ that are closely interconnected, practices represent background knowledge in terms of know-how, understanding, emotional and motivational states of knowledge (Reckwitz, 2002: 249). These practices represent ‘conventional’ ways of doing things that stress the routine and collective, as opposed to individualistic, aspects of consumption, with w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: the practice of the meal
• Part I Acquisition
• Part II Appropriation
• Part III Appreciation
• Part IV Disposal
• Index