The Sociological Review · 2012 · 295 citations · 38 references
Social SciencesAnthropologyEthnographyFood SafetyWaste ManagementAnthropology Of FoodConsumption PracticesEveryday Eating PracticesFood WasteConsumer Food Waste BehaviorCulinary UsesDisposalEthnographic Data AnalysisFood Waste ManagementHome Food Environment
Home food provisioning is pulled in conflicting directions by public discourses that simultaneously moralize food waste reduction and question food safety in thrift, reuse, and saving practices, creating moments where food becomes waste. The study investigates how consumers negotiate use‑by dates and other practices to understand how food becomes waste, aiming to inform interventions that reduce food waste. The authors employed qualitative and ethnographic methods, including focus groups, life‑history interviews, and observations, within a four‑year European research programme on consumer anxieties about food. The study reveals that everyday practices, especially the negotiation of use‑by dates, drive food waste, suggesting that interventions should address these practices to reduce waste.
Two significant realms of social anxiety, visible in the discourses of media and public policy, potentially pull practices of home food provisioning in conflicting directions. On the one hand, campaigns to reduce the astonishing levels of food waste generated in the UK moralize acts of both food saving (such as keeping and finding creative culinary uses for leftovers) and food disposal. On the other hand, agencies concerned with food safety, including food-poisoning, problematize common practices of thrift, saving and reuse around provisioning. The tensions that arise as these public discourses are negotiated together into domestic practices open up moments in which ‘stuff’ crosses the line from being food to being waste. This paper pursues this through the lens of qualitative and ethnographic data collected as part of a four-year European research programme concerned with consumer anxieties about food. Through focus groups, life-history interviews and observations, data emerged which give critical insights into processes from which food waste results. With a particular focus on how research participants negotiate use-by dates, we argue that interventions to reduce food waste can be enhanced by appreciating how food becomes waste through everyday practices.
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