Cooking aesthetics and lunch discipline: how lunch-time staff influences children’s experience of food

TY - ABST

T1 - Cooking aesthetics and lunch discipline

T2 - ESA 12th Conference of the European Sociological Association 2015

AU - Andersen, Sidse Schoubye

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - The vast majority of children in developed democracies eat at least one meal a day in an institutional context, such as in school, but research about the ways in which school contexts influence children’s perception of food is limited. This paper analyzes how two very different contexts shape the way the same group of children relates to food in school. Both contexts are new inventions at the school, introduced through a school meal intervention to promote better health among the children. Field observations, focus group interviews with participating children, and interviews with participating adults document the experiences in both contexts, and results reveal new evidence on the relation between context structure and children’s perception of food. In one context, the children prepare their daily school meal, and this context offers a playful and sensory handling of foods. The adults (school chefs) engage the children playfully and involve them in, for example, decisions about food preparation, tastes, and presentations of the meal. In the other context, the children eat the school meal they just prepared in the first context, but this second context is predominantly rule structured, insisting on the traditionalism of appropriate table manners. Here, in stark contrast to the first context, the adults (teachers and school chefs) control and regulate social interactions firmly. Results suggest that adults’ preconceptions of what constitutes a “proper” meal inhibit the children from gaining an aesthetic and joyful meal experience.

AB - The vast majority of children in developed democracies eat at least one meal a day in an institutional context, such as in school, but research about the ways in which school contexts influence children’s perception of food is limited. This paper analyzes how two very different contexts shape the way the same group of children relates to food in school. Both contexts are new inventions at the school, introduced through a school meal intervention to promote better health among the children. Field observations, focus group interviews with participating children, and interviews with participating adults document the experiences in both contexts, and results reveal new evidence on the relation between context structure and children’s perception of food. In one context, the children prepare their daily school meal, and this context offers a playful and sensory handling of foods. The adults (school chefs) engage the children playfully and involve them in, for example, decisions about food preparation, tastes, and presentations of the meal. In the other context, the children eat the school meal they just prepared in the first context, but this second context is predominantly rule structured, insisting on the traditionalism of appropriate table manners. Here, in stark contrast to the first context, the adults (teachers and school chefs) control and regulate social interactions firmly. Results suggest that adults’ preconceptions of what constitutes a “proper” meal inhibit the children from gaining an aesthetic and joyful meal experience.

M3 - Conference abstract in proceedings

SP - 224

BT - Differences, Inequalities and Sociological Imagination

Y2 - 25 August 2015 through 28 August 2015

ER -