A bit of leftovers after the meal?

Hello! I am comming to the party a bit late--appologies. Thanks Ian for letting me gatecrash.


I think I would like to make just a couple of tenative comments concerning practices and materiality.


Firstly, and I am being very tentative here as one is always warry of comming into a conversation that is most of the way through and then just saying somethign that has already been said...but here are some tentative thoughts:

Following on from Rachel: I guess I would like to suggest more work that considers the idea of capacities and learning as part of food practices (see Rouse 2007 and Schatzki 2002 on practice theory) and how in creating the everyday spaces of cooking and shopping and eating, learning is a key aspect which is linked to the continuation but also innovation within food cultures. A critical mass of particular capacities also helps to shape and reshape places (I am sort of thinking Massey (2005) here but applied to foodspaces), which in turn makes it much harder for those with different capacities and different foodways to be engaged with these spaces/places and thier politics (I have a paper forcomming in the Annals that takes on board some of these ideas in relation to "local food").

Linked to this I think is the notion that time-space and space-times (see Schatzki 2005 and also Haggerstrand1982) can contribute a lot to the ways that we understand how food is imbricated in the projects of people within the context of thier lifecourse. For example, the idea that the family meal is dead in the UK because it does not seem to occure nightly. If we think carefully the meal could be instead be understood and practiced in a different form--e.g. as breakfast. So while it may look like a archetype is being lost it is often just done differently (Blake et al 2009). In research in the UK and Hungary we found that many families practice family through their foodways, but these foodways may be unique to that family and change over time as circumstances change. It is also the case that many individuals practice their foodways differently when they are eating alone because the eating or cooking or whatever is not contributing to the family project but is instead either adding to or detracting from some other aim that they have. What this way of thinking might help us with is an opportunity to move away from the notion that (usually) mothers are bad because they don't produce a roast meal every night a la June Cleaver (isn't it ironic that here name is Cleaver?). The moral outrage, at least in the UK by many ranging from those concerned with food policy to those who write and read the daily mail should I think be confronted head on rather more (although see a forthcomming book chapter by Peter Jackson in the Changing Families/Changing Food book that will come out this summer and which is the book for the CFCF research programme (www.shef.ac.uk/foodandfamilies --incidently there are a number of programme highlights on this web page as well as a really great downloadable food bibliography, also see work by Murcott 1995). While Jackson and Murcott question weather a family meal ever existed (apparently just for some and only briefly) one might ask what the effect of asking about the demise of the family meal has within society--does it, for example create more pressure on women to work a double workign day to meet some idealised notion? Does it help create a situation whereby (mostly) women feel inadequate because they find it difficult to supply and orchestrate this type of meal to their families on an everyday or even weekly basis? And what does this demonstrate to children? That they do not need to learn to cook until they are older because it is mum's job to do it? That family meals are just those that occure in the evening around a dinning table that they may or may not have (many british houses are very small and a dinning table is a luxury). That cooking needs to be complicated and for food to count as a meal it must be hot and certainly not be leftovers.

Lastly--thinking about really afters... I guess I would encourage further interrogation into what happens when things un-become food (taking off of Roe's comments about things becomming food). Food waste is a huge proportion of the UK greenhouse emmission. The UK government estimates that approximately 40% of all emissions are derived from the activities that we do every day as ordinary people going about ordinary lives. Approximately 20% of all UK emissions are associated with food production, processing, transportation, and storage (Ventour 2008). Research commissioned by WRAP, a UK government funded organisation whose aim is to help reduce carbon emissions in this country, suggests that about one third of all food purchased in the UK is thrown away. Of this discarded food, about one third is untouched and a significant proportion is still in date. Furthermore, while all types of foods are thrown away, fruit and vegetables account for the largest proportion at about 40% of all food waste, which suggests that while consumers are trying to live healthier lifestyles, much of their good intention is finding itself in the rubbish bin. Finally, the households with the greatest amount of food waste are those with children. What is the impact of food waste in other industrialised countries? Certainly people do not buy food with the intention of wasting it--so the question is what happens? WRAP argues that many consumers do not plan appropriately when they purchase food and buy too much. When this is considered against the ways that retailers market foods to consumers (e.g. buy one, get one free offers) it becomes clear why cost-conscious shoppers would end up with more food that they need , especially as care is expressed through the savings achieved when goods are purchased ( see Miller 1998). Likewise, cultural practices such as teaching children about healthy eating and entertaining of guests may contribute to this waste. For example, WRAP finds that poor storage of fruits and vegetables contributes to a shorter lifespan (e.g. non-refrigeration and high light conditions), however ongoing research suggests that parents use a fruit bowl as a way to encourage children to eat more fruits (WRAP estimates 56% of all households have a fruit bowl). Similarly, for some, certain foods are purchased for consumption by others as a treat rather than for oneself or ones family (Blake et al 2010). This treat food includes food to be given as a gift (e.g. a box of biscuits) or served to guests (e.g. cakes). Among middle class households in the UK, good manners dictate that any when guests appear special food should be made available along with a cup of tea. Given that visitors are not always planned, this also necessitates these households keep a constant supply of this type of food, which must be monitored for freshness but never eaten oneself (there is some evidence that the need to store food in case someone comes buy is also a problem for Pakistani families in the UK as well and one presumes the situation may be similar for other minority groups). Thus, when this food is no longer suitable for guests, it becomes part of the waste problem. Finally, national cuisines and food histories are likely to influence how individuals understand food as no longer being edible. For example, amongst the white population in the UK, we found food is often judged by its visual properties rather than by its smell or feel. This is likely to be partly due to an industrial history that separated food production from food consumption and necessitated a food processing and delivery system that required higher amounts of packaging than would be the case if food were produced within very short distances from where it is eaten (Calquhoun 2006, see also Atkins 2007 for a specific discussion in relation to milk). These differences in culture, history, and food provisioning and retailing practices suggest that the social and cultural practices of groups must be understood in order to tackle the problem of food waste.

Maybe a bit of a rant, hopefully something useful here. I hope I have not been too self promoting, but these are just ideas I have been thinking about lately.

I am a bit new at the blog thing and I am not certain how exactly to add my reference to the side column so here they are...

Atkins, Peter (2007) Laboratories, laws and the career of a commodity. Environment and Planning D: Society and space, 25, 967-89.
Blake, M. K. , Mellor, J. C. L. and L. Crane (2010) Buying Local Food: The rols of shopping practices, place and consumption networks in defining food as "local". Forthcomming in the
Annals of the Association of American Geographers.
Blake, M. K., Mellor, JCL and L Crane (2009) Eating up time, Eating in Time, in Jackson, P. (ed.) Changing Families/Changing Food, Palgreve-Macmillon (in press).
Calquhoun, Kate. 2007. Taste: The story of Britain Though Its Cooking. London: Bloomsbury.
Hagerstrand, Torston (1982). Diorama, path and project. Tijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 73(6):323-399.
Jackson, P. (2009) Changing Families Chaning Food, Palgreve-Mcmillon (in press).
Massey, D. 2005. For Space. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.
Miller, Daniel. 1998. A theory of shopping. Cambridge: Polity Press.Murcott, A. 1995. Family Meals - a Thing of the Past. In Food, Health and Identity, ed. P. Caplan, 32-49. London: Routledge.
Rouse, J. 2007. Social Practices and Normativity. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37:46-
56.
Schatzki, T. R. 2002. The site of the social. University Park, Pennsylvania: The
Pennsylvania State University
Schatzki, T. R. (2005). Where Times Meet. Cosmos and History: The journal of natural and social philosophy 1(2): 191-212.
The Royal Society (2008) UK and EU Climate Change Policy (available online http://royalsociety.org/landing.asp?id=1278), London: The Royal Society (date last accessed 1 September 2008).
Ventour, Lorrrayne (2008) The food we waste, London: WRAP.