An Abstract: Understanding Food Routines: Focus on Interactions Between Food Waste and Healthy Eating with Practice Theories

Abstract

We question how the recommended practices to promote healthy eating (HE) and the recommended practices to fight food waste (FW) integrate into daily routines and how they interact. The objective is then to observe how these recommendations are articulated on a daily constrained basis. This study identifies either synergies or contradictions between two campaigns developed independently in France and aims at contributing to behavior-change initiatives. We adopt a practice-based approach with a holistic view of daily consumption, paying attention to the materiality and to the social aspects of bodily incorporated actions (Reckwitz 2002; Shove et al. 2012). FW and HE do not result from a single act but rather from a set of performances (Yates and Southerton 2014), so actions contributing to FW and those conditioning HE are potentially interconnected, and practice theories can help to understand these relationships. Our qualitative methodology is based on (a) semi-directive interviews with 23 participants (method of collage aiming at describing food practices from shopping to storage) and (b) observation of shopping, cooking, eating, and storage practices with 10 of the 23 participants. We describe food practices with the following categories: supply, cooking, eating, storing/stocking, eating out, exercising, and with a set of criteria for each category. The study uses a five-element classification to characterize the constitutive “elements” of practices: materials, physical capacities, knowledge, social environment, and teleoaffective structure. The results highlight two types of coordination needed to implement recommendations to fight against FW and to promote HE: (1) peer coordination to take into account the preferences and tastes of the individuals in their households, which contributes to the cohesion between members of a household around food, and (2) coordination between different activities depending on organizational arrangements which are often necessary for the realization of all practices. In conclusion, coordination and organization are central to implementing the recommended practices. In response, our study leads to the proposal of two devices to aid coordination: (1) a “special leftovers” floor of removable size in the refrigerator and (2) a decision tree to propose formats and shopping list holders according to a segmentation of food supply and meal preparation practices. These results give cues for a new approach for public policies aiming at modifying consumer behavior from a practice-based, holistic, and contextualized perspective. This work also contributes to the theoretical reflections on practice theories application in the field of consumer research.