Abstract
This chapter demonstrates how convenience foods have become incorporated within people’s everyday routines and dietary practices including the way shopping and cooking convenience foods have been normalized. Examining historical and contemporary sources, the chapter shows how commercial baby food in Sweden has needed continuous work to reconcile its use with notions of being a ‘good mother’. The chapter shows how certain practices associated with processed baby food are scripted (involving notions of prescription, de-inscription and re-inscription) in relation to advice from health authorities and other official bodies or in response to marketing campaigns. Commercially produced baby food is considered convenient in enabling parents (usually mothers) to feed their children in a variety of locations, at home and ‘on the move’. While it is often regarded as an acceptable and modern way of infant feeding, based on ideologies of ‘scientific motherhood’, it can pose significant problems in terms of cultural appropriateness, given competing (idealized and highly gendered) ideologies about ‘feeding the family’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Swedish text reads: ‘För att barnet ska få i sig alla de viktiga näringsämnen som finns i fisk, inte bara DHA, bör föräldrarna i första hand uppmuntras att lära sitt barn att tycka om fisk. Ofta finns det någon fiskrätt som kan uppskattas. En del föräldrar tycker att det är svårt att tillaga fisk och kan behöva tips om hur snabbt och enkelt det faktiskt kan vara. Det finns också många bra halvfabrikat och färdiga fiskrätter att köpa’ (Livsmedelsverket 2015, p. 27).
- 2.
Examples of cooking with one hand while a mother balances a small child on her hip were also found in the UK (cf. Meah and Jackson 2017).
- 3.
The British material also includes examples of parents who resorted to convenience food when their children refused to eat other kinds of food, using the argument that ‘at least he’s eating something’.
References
Afflerback, S., Carter, S., Anthony, A., & Grauerholtz, L. (2013). Infant feeding: Consumerism in the age of intensive mothering and risk society. Journal of Consumer Culture, 13(3), 1–19.
Akrich, M. (1992). The de-scription of technical objects. In W. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change (pp. 205–224). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Akrich, M., & Latour, B. (1992). A summary of a convenient vocabulary for the semiotics of human and nonhuman assemblies. In W. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology building society: Studies in sociotechnical change (pp. 259–264). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Apple, R. (1987). Mothers and medicine: A social history of infant feeding, 1890–1950. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Apple, R. (1995). Constructing motherhood: Scientific motherhood in the nineteenth and twenieth centuries. Social History of Medicine, 8(2), 161–178.
Apple, R. (2006). Perfect motherhood: Science and childrearing in America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Arnould, E. J. (1989). Toward a broadened theory of preference formation and the diffusion of innovations: Cases from Zinder Province, Niger Republic. Journal of Consumer Research, 16(2), 239–267.
Atkinson, L. (2014). Green moms: The social construction of green mothering via environmental advertising appeals. Consumption, Markets and Culture, 17(6), 553–572.
Bentley, A. (2014). Inventing baby food: Taste, health, and the industrialization of the American diet. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Berker, T., Hartmann, M., Punie, Y., & Ward, K. (2006). Domestication of media and technology. Glasgow: Open University Press.
Brembeck, H., & Fuentes, M. (2017). Convenient food for baby: A study of weaning as a social practice. Food, Culture and Society, 20(4), 569–586.
Brembeck, H., Torell, V. B., Falkström, M., & Johansson, B. (Eds.). (2001). Det konsumerande barnet [The consuming child]. Gothenburg: Etnologiska Föreningen i Västsverige.
Bugge, A. B., & Almås, R. (2006). Domestic dinner: Representations and practices of a proper meal among young suburban mothers. Journal of Consumer Culture, 6, 203–228.
Carrigan, M., & Szmigin, I. (2006). ‘Mothers of invention’: Maternal empowerment and convenience consumption. European Journal of Marketing, 40(9–10), 1122–1142.
Carrigan, M., Szmigin, I., & Leek, S. (2006). Managing routine food choices in UK families: The role of convenience consumption. Appetite, 47, 371–383.
Cochoy, F. (2004). Is the modern consumer a Buridan’s donkey? Product packaging and consumer choice. In K. M. Ekström & H. Brembeck (Eds.), Elusive consumption (pp. 45–64). Oxford: Berg.
Cochoy, F. (2005). A brief history of ‘customers’, or the gradual standardization of markets and organizations. Sociologie du travail, 47, e36–e56.
Cook, D. T. (1995). The mother as consumer. The Sociological Quarterly, 36(3), 505–522.
Euromonitor International. (2016b). Ready meals in Sweden. Retrieved December 15, 2017, from www.euromonitor.com/ready-meals-in-sweden/report.
Fagerfjäll, R. (2012). Semper: vällingen som blev bestående [Semper: Porridge that became pemanent]. Stockholm: Centrum för Näringslivshistoria.
Foucault, M. (1995). Dicipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Vintage Books.
Fuentes, C., & Fuentes, M. (2017). Making a market for alternatives: Marketing devices and the qualification of a vegan milk substitute. Journal of Marketing Management, 33(7–8), 529–555.
Fuentes, M., & Brembeck, H. (2017). Best for baby? Framing weaning practice and motherhood in web-mediated marketing. Consumption, Markets and Culture, 20(2), 153–175.
Gritsai, O. (2001). Haute cuisine versus healthy nutrition: Cultural gradients in Europe and the geography of baby food. GeoJournal, 53, 71–80.
Halkier, B. (2010). Consumption challenged: Food in medialised everyday lives. Farnham: Ashgate.
Halkier, B. (2016). Civic engagement by invitation? Citizen negotiations about public media framings of everyday life responsibilities for societal problems. In H. K. Nielsen (Ed.), The democratic public sphere: Current challenges and prospects (pp. 289–317). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Hand, M., & Shove, E. (2007). Condensing practices: Ways of living with a freezer. Journal of Consumer Culture, 7(1), 79–104.
Hand, M., Shove, E., & Southerton, D. E. (2005). Explaining showering: A discussion of the material, conventional, and temporal dimensions of practice. Sociological Research Online, 10(2), 1–13.
Hawkins, G. (2012). The performativity of food packaging: Market devices, waste crisis and recycling. The Sociological Review, 60(2), 66–83.
Jelsma, J. (2003). Innovation for sustainability: Involving users, politics and technology. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 16(2), 103–116.
Jelsma, J. (2006). Designing ‘moralized’ products: Theory and practice. In P. P. Verbeek & A. Slob (Eds.), User behaviour and technology development: Shaping sustainable relationships between consumers and technologies (pp. 221–231). Dordrecht: Springer.
Keenan, J., & Stapleton, H. (2014). ‘It won’t do her any harm’ they said, ‘or they wouldn’t put it on the market’: Infant weaning, markets and mothers’ narratives of trust. In S. O’Donohoe, M. Hogg, P. Maclaran, L. Martens, & L. Stevens (Eds.), Motherhood, markets and consumption: The making of mothers in contemporary Western cultures (pp. 71–89). London: Routledge.
Levenstein, H. (1988). Revolution at the table: The transformation of the American diet. New York: Oxford University Press.
Livsmedelsverket. (2011). Råd om mat för barn 0-5 år [Advice about food for children 0–5 years]. Rapport 22-2011.
Livsmedelsverket. (2015). Råd om mat för barn 0-5 år: handledning för barnhälsovården. Retrieved December 17, 2017, from https://www.livsmedelsverket.se/globalassets/matvanor-halsa-miljo/kostrad-matvanor/spadbarn/bra-mat-for-barn-0-5-ar---handledning-for-barnhalsovarden.pdf.
Marshall, D., & Bell, R. (2003). Meal construction: Exploring the relationship between eating occasion and location. Food Quality and Preference, 14(1), 53–64.
May, C., & Finch, T. (2009). Implementing, embedding, and integrating practices: An outline of normalization process theory. Sociology, 43(3), 535–554.
Meah, A., & Jackson, P. (2017). Convenience as care: Culinary antinomies in practice. Environment and Planning A, 49(9), 2065–2081.
Moisio, R., Arnould, E. J., & Price, L. L. (2004). Between mothers and markets: Constructing family identity through home-made food. Journal of Consumer Culture, 4(3), 361–384.
Radio Sweden. (2013, January 12). Arsenic and lead found in Swedish baby food.
Schatzki, T. R. (2005). Peripheral vision: The sites of organizations. Organization Studies, 26(3), 465–484.
Semper. (2016). Semper presenterar trendspaning om barnmat (press release). Retrieved December 20, 2017, from http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/semper/pressreleases/semper-presenterar-trendspaning-om-barnmat-2016-1380569.
Shove, E. (2003). Comfort, cleanliness and convenience. Oxford: Berg.
Shove, E., & Pantzar, M. (2005). Consumers, producers and practices. Understanding the invention and reinvention of Nordic walking. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(1), 43–64.
Shove, E., & Southerton, D. (2000). Defrosting the freezer: From novelty to convenience. A narrative of normalization. Journal of Material Culture, 5(3), 301–319.
Smith, A. F. (Ed.). (2004). Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (Vol. 1). New York: Oxford University Press.
Trädgårdh Tornhill, C. (2012). Barnmat: råd och recept. Stockholm: Gothia Fortbildning.
Trentmann, F. (2005). Knowing consumers—Histories, identities, practices: An introduction. In F. Trentmann (Ed.), The making of the consumer: Knowledge, power and identity in the modern world (pp. 1–27). Oxford: Berg.
Wagner, K. (2013). ‘Looks great, feels amazing’: The tactile dimension of packaging. In L. Hansson, U. Holmberg, & H. Brembeck (Eds.), Making sense of consumption (pp. 139–153). Gothenburg: Centre for Consumer Science.
Warde, A. (1999). Convenience food: Space and timing. British Food Journal, 101(7), 518–527.
Warde, A. (2014). After taste: Culture, consumption and theories of practice. Journal of Consumer Culture, 14(3), 279–303.
Warde, A. (2016). The practice of eating. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jackson, P. et al. (2018). The Normalization of Convenience Food. In: Reframing Convenience Food. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78151-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78151-8_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78150-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-78151-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)