;;;eating habits 2024.

How food shapes everyday life

The way we eat and prepare food has changed hugely for the average family
over the last few generations. When our parents and grandparents were
children, food was generally prepared by the woman of a household. The family
was expected to eat whatever was provided – rather than being choosy about
special likes and dislikes. Today, packaged foods such as crisps or string cheeses,
ready meals and new kitchen technologies such as microwaves have changed
things dramatically – in many homes different family members help themselves
to food throughout the day, often preparing it themselves. Even young children
can work microwaves, and will make a ‘poptart’ for breakfast or a hot snack
when they return home from school. The old fashioned ritual of eating as a
family round the dinner table has been replaced in many families with separate
snacks eaten in front of the television, or standing in the kitchen.
Food and time
And it’s not just how we eat today that’s new, it is also what we eat. Up until a
few decades ago, many families kept to a weekly food pattern, eating the same
foods on the same day of the week most weeks of the year. What was ****ed
each day depended on the leftovers that needed using up or whether it was a
pay day or a work day. Old fashioned housekeeping skills – the ability to run a
household cheaply and simply – were central to the kinds of foods that were
prepared.
Today we are surrounded by choice. Takeaways, fast foods, packeted snacks
and ready meals have completely changed the way we prepare and eat food.
Many people have not acquired the culinary skills that their parents had.
However, the rising interest in ****ing marked by the many TV celebrity chefs
and ***t-selling ****ery books, may be the first sign that things are changing
once again. Similarly, a growing awareness of health issues connected to diet,
such as o***ity and heart disease, may encourage people to leave McDonalds
and go back to the kitchen.
Surviving the everyday
It must be remembered that for millions of people throughout the world, each
day is shaped by the struggle to find enough food to survive. Whether this
means walking miles to collect wood on which to ****, trying to feed a family
on low payments for cash crops or searching for food among a city’s rubbish
tips, the possibility of hunger or starvation is an ever present threat. For most
people in the Developed World the ways that the everyday is shaped by food
are very different. More than 30% of food in Britain is thrown away, and it’s
more likely that a British person is faced with too much choice than too little.