The Nation's Diet

The Social Science of Food Choice

Anne Murcott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138154667
• eBook ISBN: 9781317884804
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

'Why we eat what we eat?' is a key question for the 1990s, posed again and again in government departments, in sectors of the food industry, by professionals in health, in education, and in catering, to name a few. It is the same question adopted as the springboard for the UK Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) Research Programme on 'The Nation's Diet' (1992-1998), a wide ranging, multi-disciplinary set of co-ordinated basic research projects across the social sciences, including economics, psychology, social anthropology and sociology, as well as education and media studies.

Contributors include;
Annie S. Anderson, Hannah Bradby, Robert G. Burgess, Michael Burton, Helen Bush, Pat Caplan, Mark Conner, G. Jill Davies, Richard Dorsett, Alan Dowey, John Eldridge, Ben Fine, Andrew Flynn, Leslie Gofton, Susan Gregory, Malcolm Hamilton, Michelle Harrison, Michael Heasman, Spencer Henson, Pauline Horne, Rhiannon James, Anne Keane, Debbie Kemmer, Mike Lean, Diana Leat, Zara Lipsey, C. Fergus Lowe, Sally Macintyre, Terry Marsden, David Marshall, Lydia Martens, David Miller, Marlene Morrison, Elizabeth Murphy, Georgina OIiver, Susan Parker, Christine Phipps, Tessa M. Pollard, Rachel Povey, Jacquie Reilly, Richard Shepard, David Smith, Paul Sparks, Andrew Steptoe, Ann Walker, Alan Warde, Jane Wardle, Anna Willetts, Janice Williams, Rory Williams, Judith Wright, Neil Wrigley, Trevor Young.

CHAPTER 1
Food choice, the social sciences and ‘The Nation’s Diet’ Research Programme

Anne Murcott

Introduction

This is a book about food choice in the 1990s.

It looks set to be a decade, so we tell ourselves, which has seen a veritable explosion of international public concern about food, a burgeoning of interest in diet and a growing fascination with eating. What may loosely be called the food economy appears more ‘global’ than ever, at the same time as North/South disparities in supply and accessibility threaten to worsen still further. Across the industrialised world people’s interest in their own food has become intense. Cookbooks are reported to occupy a huge share of non-fiction sales. Elaborate television programmes on food are more numerous than ever; series that are game shows as well as cookery demonstrations, or travellers’ tales of exotic ways of life as much as of unfamiliar cuisines. Full pages devoted to good eating and dining out are firmly established in broadsheet newspapers, never mind whole magazines in glossy full-colour.

People are not just more interested in what they eat: eating patterns and habits themselves are also held to be on the move – both cause and consequence. So-called ‘ethnic’ and theme restaurants and cafés have spread even to remoter regions. It is not just the cosmopolitanism of Mexican food in London, croissants in Sydney and English puddings that have crossed to Paris. Vegetarian and Indian cooking can be had in sparsely populated parts of Scotland; a Chinese takeaway is as likely, it seems, as the fish-and-chip shop in the heart of the South Wales valleys or the Yorkshire Dales.

Interest in other people’s food is itself big international business: food and drink represent one of the largest UK exports (£8.2bn in 1993); exotic tropical fruits on sale in British stores now look quite ordinary. It is also competitive business. ‘Cola wars’, the siting of out-of-town supermarkets or genetically engineered tomatoes are among the more flamboyant current manifestations, strikingly representing the tip of the industrial iceberg. At the same time, from quite another quarter, interest in the whole population’s eating habits has been integrated into public health policy and efforts to reduce heart diseases, the main cause of premature death in industrialised nations (Department of Health 1992). And the expression food scares has achieved a currency unimaginable a decade ago. Indeed, there is a strong impression that the mass media no longer need to add ‘mad cow disease’ in parentheses in items about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

So, why do we eat what we do? Here is a key question for the 1990s, posed again and again in government departments, in sectors of the food industry, by professionals in health, in education and in catering, and many more. Here, perhaps, is a deceptively simple question. Here, certainly, is a question that is self-evidently open to social scientific investigation.

Coinciding with all this, the 1990s also look set to be the period in which, internationally, social scientists have at last begun to pay more sustained attention to food choice. Indeed, if the publication of textbooks, conference proceedings, new journals and research reviews is anything to go by, there are signs that their attention is becoming more firmly consolidated.¹

In Britain, social scientists have been further enabled to attend to the topic by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which created a research programme on food choice – or, to give it its full title, ‘ “The Nation’s Diet”: the social science of food choice’. This book presents work from that Programme which adopted the key question posed above as its central theme. Indeed, it is the book of the Programme, hence sharing its name. As such, it has three main purposes.

First, it is designed to display the range of the Programme’s research. As will be seen, one of the hallmarks of the Programme’s research is variety – in the aspect of food choice studied, in the disciplines that are represented, as well as in the social group, geographic region or aspect of human affairs selected for special investigation. Setting out a selection of key research results, the book also provides an introduction to the constituent projects and sketches, where appropriate, the research designs, data collection and data-handling techniques they adopted. To these ends and for readers wishing to concentrate on just a few topics or on one discipline’s approach, each chapter is written so that it may be read independently of the rest.

As well as offering a portrait of the Programme’s work, this book has two other purposes. Both of these reflect the fact that, like all ESRC Programmes, The Nation’s Diet’ aims to exist as more than simply a checklist of projects. Each of these additional purposes derives from the two elements of the book’s (and the Programme’s) sub-title: ‘the social science of food choice’. Being work on the social science of food choice allows the book to meet a second purpose. It aims to serve as a preliminary introduction to this group of sciences for readers who may have had little previous acquaintance with them. Almost six years’ involvement with the Programme has taught that even as rudimentary a prelude to the social sciences as space allows here, anticipates questions born of unfamiliarity that are commonly asked about its work. This introductory aim is reflected in one of the bases for dividing the volume into parts, illuminating distinctive similarities and contrasts among the social sciences represented in the Programme. It is also integral to the whole book: the brief for each chapter in Parts One and Two requested that authors made plain their project’s social scientific discipline’s inheritance, indicating the inspiration in terms of theory, method and evidence on which they drew to set it up.

Being work in the social sciences on food choice serves as the occasion for examining what turn out to be quite varying interpretations and meanings in the way food choice is defined across the Programme. It was remarkable: all those working under its auspices were heir to the sub-title, yet they interpreted it in so many different ways. Was there anything in it? Did it matter? Or is ‘food choice’ merely a convenient expression, useful as a rough and ready designation of a general sphere of interest, and no more?

At times, it is to be no more than that. But the reader will not have to be particularly sharp eyed to detect one or two friendly differences of opinion lying below the surface of this volume, including varying degrees of enthusiasm for, and interest in, examining definitions of food choice. Indeed, Lowe² allows himself a moment of impatience; so forcefully is his attention riveted on what effects a change in the fruit or vegetables which children actually put in their mouths, that other considerations in conceptualising food choice, such as access to, or the supply of those fruits or vegetables, threaten an unwarranted distraction.

For some disciplines most of the time, and for all of us some of the time, reflecting on what anyone means by ‘food choice’ is liable to be reserved for another occasion. Bracketing the matter in this way presents no particular difficulties unless and until anyone proceeds on the assumption that the expression food choice is neutral, empty of connotations other than reference to a list of items between which selection is made.³ Considering food choice in this fashion is, in important respects, the springboard for the whole volume.

In all, these three purposes combine to present as many discontinuities as commonalities between the chapters. But it is just such discontinuities that represent the state of the art whose nature is integral to the overall subject under discussion. If obliged to characterise ‘The Nation’s Diet’ in a single word, then the word is ‘diversity’.

Serving as both preface and introduction to the collection that follows, this opening chapter divides into three main sections. It starts with a description of the Programme itself, its origins, purpose and organisational character. Like all others supported by ESRC, the Programme consists of separate projects, in this case commissioned in two phases. Like all others too, it is multidisciplinary⁴: a theme pursued in the next section that turns to address the second of the book’s purposes. Section two, then, consists of broad brush commentary on disciplinary differences and similarities in the social sciences and seeks to provide a reference point for this aspect of the Programme’s diversity. Readers who already know about ESRC Programmes or who are familiar with the social sciences may well want to move straight to the third section of this chapter which concentrates on ‘food choice’ itself. Doing so springs from several puzzlements already hinted at above. How far is this ubiquitous expression tacitly treated as one that has achieved currency simply because of its brevity? Has it been adopted so readily as a convenient indication of a substantive held moderately stable while analysing other phenomena? Does the very expression ‘food choice’ and the manner in which it is used deserve analytic attention – i.e. as a topic of investigation rather than solely a resource for the investigator? The plan here is not to arrive at the answers, but to begin cleaning the ground for future judgements about whether and in which directions to pursue the questions further. In order to do so, the intention is not to arbitrate between different definitions of food choice, but to expose, rather than leave concealed, the diversity that is a hallmark of the Programme’s work.

The Programme’s diversity is not solely evident in disciplinary terms. The chapters to follow consist of an equally diverse collection of substantive topics on which projects concentrated by way of addressing its question ‘Why do people eat what they do?’ Seeking to make its multiple diversities more manageable, the volume is divided into three parts. All three are prefaced by an editorial overview outlining the book’s organisation, including a thumbnail sketch of the main features of each chapter. Chapters in Parts One and Two are based on research projects from both phases of the Programme and on one of the Programme’s research fellowships. Much shorter, Part Three is made up of chapters that are amended versions of three reviews specially commissioned for the Programme when the second phase became imminent.

The reader will find that this introductory chapter repeatedly returns to the same point – the Programme’s diversity – via different routes. And it will become apparent that in order to set the scene for the rest of the book, it is necessary, now and then, to stray some way from food choice. The second and third sections of this chapter have been written so that readers may consult them as free standing points of reference, after, or between, reading the chapters that follow.

In recognition of the extremely wide range of those interested in food choice, this volume has been prepared with a highly heterogeneous readership in mind. As a result, this first chapter makes strenuous attempts to be non-technical and, along with the other contributions, has sought to make the diversity of the Programme’s work accessible to a parallel diversity of expertise and experience, at the same time as aiming to steer a course that is neither mystifying or condescending. For the same reason, the book avoids being unduly burdened with footnotes and references. In any case, it can only be an introduction to the Programme and its constituent projects: each chapter presents only part of the study on which it is based. Readers wanting to pursue their more extensive writeups are directed in the first instance to the consolidated list of references at the end of this volume and thereafter to the Programme’s web page: http://www.sbu.ac.uk/˜natdi.

Writing for so heterogeneous a readership brings with it a heightened awareness that selected chapters are concerned with analysing spheres in which, correspondingly, selected readers are highly expert. It is hoped that seeing their own specialty through social scientific eyes will be illuminating. Equally, it is anticipated that while some topics may thus be extremely well-known, other chapters will introduce thought-provoking coverage of hitherto altogether unfamiliar aspects of quite why people eat what they do.

‘The Nation’s Diet’ Programme

In its own focus and internal organisation as well as in its broader academic, public and policy contexts, ‘The Nation’s Diet’ has seen extensive evolution during its lifetime. The Programme was funded by the ESRC to run from 1992 to 1998. Its aims are to ‘improve understanding of the processes of food choice’ and to ‘establish a clear and legitimate role for the social sciences in this field’, aiming to remedy the comparatively low level of academic social scientific attention to the topic. At its core, it comprises 16 research projects and two research fellowships. Some of these are based on cross-institutional collaborations which means that more than 20 British universities are involved. By the end, well over 70 academic staff, one way or another, will have been associated with the work.

Partly by way of alerting the reader to what can be expected from this book, and partly because the word ‘programme’ (along with ‘project’ and even ‘research’) is so commonly used to mean widely differing tasks and working arrangements, some comment is needed on what an ESRC Research Programme is and is not. Above all, ESRC Programmes are geared to ‘scientific and policy relevant topics of strategic and national importance’. It is to this extent that they represent ‘directed’ research. They do so, however, only in comparison with ESRC’s ‘responsive mode’ funding, i.e. the competition for project grants on subjects chosen by academics themselves. Once a Programme’s topic has been identified, however, the projects of which it is eventually composed are duly selected by the established system of scientific quality control, i.e. response to a call and peer review, where the more detailed version of the topic is worked up by the academics themselves. It is this set of procedures which in good measure creates a Programme’s ‘profile’.

Then, like all ESRC Programmes, ‘The Nation’s Diet’ is multidisciplinary (discussed further in the next section). And, like all Programmes, it exists as a coordinated network of studies located in universities (or independent research institutes) across the country, led and supported by a part-time director and a steering committee. Though aligned with the aims of the Programme, each study is autonomous in that it is conceived, designed and carried out completely independently of the others. As a result, Programmes are not tightly regimented. Indeed, the Programme is probably best understood as a loose federation of projects with points of commonality that began to emerge only during the progress of their work and continued to evolve after they have concluded. So it is these institutional features, against a lively context of public and policy concerns, which have left their mark on the character of The Nation’s Diet’ and contributed to shaping the distinctive manner in which it is simultaneously selective and diverse.

Since a Programme’s topic is originally determined in the light of policy as well as scientific timeliness, obviously the broader context also has a bearing on its inception. Equally obviously, much that has surrounded ‘The Nation’s Diet’ is, and continues to be, highly dynamic. Over and above developments in the state of the art, there are two things in particular. Revisions to the UK national science policy is one. This underscored, but also required greater prominence of, selected features that were already built into the Programme, including attention to the public understanding of the social sciences. The other is the dramatic constellation of events associated with, and consequent on, mounting concern about the safety of the industrialised food supply, especially in Britain. These continue at sufficiently rapid a pace that report or commentary is almost bound to be out of date by the time it is published.

All three of these arenas of change are the subject of separate treatment (Murcott, forthcoming) – which is not, however, to disregard their importance as a backdrop to the chapters that follow. It would be facile to think that research conducted before some set of events took place, no matter how far-reaching they may be, was, as a result, less worthy of attention. Any effect of those events cannot be ignored and needs to be the subject of some suitably designed social scientific ‘after’ enquiry for which ‘before’ investigations are invaluable. Indeed, apart from constituting some of the evidence for future social and economic historians of 1990s Britain, the Programme’s research retains its value, if anything, enhanced by the dramatic turn of events, in contributing to baseline studies against which later work can be compared.

One of the other distinguishing features of the Programme’s research may contribute to its longer lasting utility. From the outset ‘The Nation’s Diet’ was conceived as basic, rather than applied science, in keeping with the emphasis on its distinctive intellectual position.⁵ For, as already indicated above, the original judgement was that a sustained contribution to the field from the social sciences was considerably overdue. It is a nice judgement, though. Far from disdaining any practical application, it is one that caters for an important, if less often expressed, view. This view holds that a solution of some problem is as well served, at times even better served, by investigation which concentrates on a social scientific characterisation of the phenomena in question, rather than the (quite properly partisan) version generated by those whose profession...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• The Editor
• The Contributors
• The Nation’s Diet Research Programme Steering Committee
• Acknowledgements
• CHAPTER 1 Food choice, the social sciences and ‘The Nation’s Diet’ Research Programme
• Part One Social Sciences and Food Choice: Proceeding from Axioms, Operational Definitions and Measurements
• Part Two Social Sciences and Food Choice: Analysing Sociopolitical Processes and Cultural Constructions
• Part Three Social Sciences and Food Choice: Additional Perspectives
• References
• Index of Authors
• Index of Principal Topics