Blaming the consumer – once again: the social and material contexts of everyday food waste practices in some English households

TLDR

Public debates on UK household food waste often blame individual consumers, framing responsibility as personal. The article examines domestic food practices through ethnographic examples to understand their waste outcomes. The study analyzes feeding practices, notions of proper eating, the materiality of food, and safety anxieties, and how public health interventions shape the contexts that risk food waste. The author argues that household food waste is rooted in social and material conditions rather than individual behaviour, calling for policy focus on these contexts.

Abstract

In public debates about the volume of food that is currently wasted by UK households, there exists a tendency to blame the consumer or individualise responsibilities for affecting change. Drawing on ethnographic examples, this article explores the dynamics of domestic food practices and considers their consequences in terms of waste. Discussions are structured around the following themes: (1) feeding the family; (2) eating 'properly'; (3) the materiality of 'proper' food and its intersections with the socio-temporal demands of everyday life and (4) anxieties surrounding food safety and storage. Particular attention is paid to the role of public health interventions in shaping the contexts through which food is at risk of wastage. Taken together, I argue that household food waste cannot be conceptualised as a problem of individual consumer behaviour and suggest that policies and interventions might usefully be targeted at the social and material conditions in which food is provisioned.