Handy tins and fancy muck: Meanings of "convenience food"

1
Handy tins and fancy muck Meanings of
"convenience food"

• Libby Bishop
• ESDS Qualidata, University of Essex
• Changing Families, Changing Food Meeting
• University of Sheffield
• 15 March 2006

2
Why study convenience foods?

• One-third of home food spending-2003
• A major cause of poor dietary health
• Essential for food retailing profitability
• Contribute to decline of family meal
• Class luxury equaliser common junk
• Gender from home-made soup to fish fingers
• Challenging case for consumption theories
• Enabling factor in industrialisation of household
  production
• Justified with neoliberal choice

3
What is convenience food?

• Tins
• Frozen
• Processed
• Pre-processed
• Ready-to-cook
• Ready-to-eat
• Ready-chill
• but what about
• Tinned tomatoes?
• Oxo cubes? Bisto?
• A frozen home-made casserole?

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Theorising convenience (food)

• Not a proper meal (Murcott, et al.)
• Convenience vs. care (Warde)
• Decline in cooking skills (Lang)
• Time famines (Hochschild)
• Time-shifting (Warde)
• Expressions of agency and self-constitution
  (Valentine, Gofton)
• Structured choice (Bourdieu)
• Practice and choice (Jackson, et al.)

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Secondary analysis

• Thus secondary analysis is not the analysis of
  pre-existing data rather secondary analysis
  involves the process of re-contextualising data
• Through recontextualisation, the order of the
  data has been transformed, thus secondary
  analysis is perhaps more usefully rendered as
  primary analysis of a different order of data.
• (Moore, 2005)

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Preliminary research questions

• What attitudes are held about convenience foods?
• Is its use criticised? Why?
• Have these answers changed over time?
• Do attitudes vary with age, gender, class and
  race?

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Spreadsheet on collections
Title Edwardians Mothers and Daughters Kitchen Secrets
See handout
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Mothers and Daughters questions

• Would you say that some people are naturally
  healthier than others?
• Do you have any sort of recipes that you have for
  keeping healthy?
• And any particular ideas for keeping children
  healthy?

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Mothers and Daughters quotes and table

• See handout

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Selected Edwardians questions on meals

• Did they buy any tinned or dried vegetables or
  fruit?
• What about tinned meat?
• Could you choose what you wanted to eat from what
  was cooked or did you have to eat a bit of
  everything?
• Did all the family sit at the table for the meal?

11
Edwardians quotes and table

• See handout

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Next steps

• Historical comparison of Edwardians and 100
  Families (choice, not tins)
• In-depth qualitative study of convenience as
  practiced, with observation of shopping and food
  preparation (as well as interviews)

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Melissa, 30s, married with 4 year old son

• I have things in the cupboard I like. Like savory
  rice, packets of savory rice. I just love . I
  could just sit and eat one of those, I love that
  kind of thing. For me, its convenience. I get
  home from work and I dont.. Im not a great
  cook anyway, so I just want something I can cook
  really easily. I dont see Kyle during the day.
  He comes home at night I have two hours with him
  before he goes to bed, and I dont wantto be
  honest with youI dont want to be preparing a
  meal when I could get something down me and then
  go and spend some time with him. As a family we
  do sort of have lots of convenience food. I do
  try and get away from it. I suppose I have
  staple things in my cupboard which just happen to
  be packets of savory rice and pasta and sauces.

14
LA, 30s, married, 2 children gt 5, not doing paid
work

• Theres still a huge part of our lives with ready
  prepared foodand I cant see that going to
  change for a whileI just cant seebecause as
  the kids get older and I? get more time for me
  Ill probably end up working moreI cant see
  that suddenly Im going to have two hours every
  dayto create wonderful foodand I just think
  back and wonder how my Mum did itI dont think
  she went out muchshe didnt watch tell muchshe
  didnt have hour long conversations on the phone
  with friends which I frequently haveI just think
  our lives are very differentIm in favour of it
  I think emphasis added.