Abstract
This chapter traces the historical growth of consumer demand for various types of convenience food, acknowledging the significance of earlier forms of bottled, pickled and canned food but focusing on the period beginning in the 1950s with the development of the frozen TV dinner in the United States and contemporary European examples (including frozen, chilled and ambient products, branded and own-label). It discusses the variable market penetration of convenience food across Europe and examines the role of technological change including innovations in industrial food processing (such as the ‘cold chain’) and domestic technologies (such as refrigeration, home freezing and microwave cooking). The chapter also considers the role of supermarkets in shaping the routines of car-borne food shopping and changing gender relations and household structures (including the effects of increased female participation in the labour force and the growth of single-person households). The chapter ends with a more detailed account of the development of convenience food in the UK, Denmark, Germany and Sweden.
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Lien (1997, p. 169) claims that Norway has the highest per capita sales of frozen pizza in the world.
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Another MINTEL study reported that three quarters of UK adults had purchased a prepared meal in the last six months (Prepared Meals, May 2013).
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In the UK, men and members of one-person households were reported to be the most likely to use ready meals, while women, 16–24 year olds, over-55s and members of two-person households were the least likely (MINTEL, Chilled and Frozen Ready Meals, May 2010).
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Hecht (2009, p. 15) writes: ‘I use this term to refer to the strategic practice of designing or using technology to constitute, embody, or enact political goals. Here I define technology broadly to include artefacts as well as non-physical, systematic methods of making or doing things’. Note that this notion of technopolitics fits well with our praxeological approach. The early promotion of convenience food and its supporting material infrastructure, as well as the competences and skills needed, may just as well be described as technopolitics.
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Susan Reid (2002) has described the kitchen as a crucial site in the de-Stalinization of consumer taste in the Soviet Union following the encounter between Khrushchev and Nixon in 1959.
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For more on the significance of ‘cozy Friday’ in Sweden, see: https://sweden.se/culture-traditions/cosy-friday/ (accessed 20 December 2017).
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Jackson, P. et al. (2018). A Short History of Convenience Food. In: Reframing Convenience Food. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78151-8_2
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