Food Studies and Children

Food studies is an interdisciplinary field of research that uses the study of food to investigate diverse sociocultural processes. Because eating is both a biological necessity and a cultural practice, studies of food are particularly well situated to examine the interplay of material and symbolic dimensions of social life. Until recently, food studies scholarship paid little attention to children, except as recipients of care within the family. The 2009 publication of Children, Food and Identity in Everyday Life marked an important shift in this regard, as editors Allison James, Anne Kjorholt, and Vebjorg Tingstad framed the volume as the first to bridge the fields of food studies and childhood studies. Children relate to food in multidimensional ways: as growing bodies in need of nourishment, as ...