Biographies and geographies: Consumer understandings of the origins of foods

Abstract

This article argues for a biographical and geographical understanding of foods and food choice. It suggests that such an approach highlights one of the most compelling characteristics of food - that being the way in which it connects the wide worlds of an increasingly internationalised food system into the intimate space of the home and the body. More specifically, and based on ongoing empirical research with 12 households in inner north London, the article explores one aspect of food biographies, through an interlinked consideration of what consumers know of the origins of foods and consumers’ reactions to systems of food provision. It concludes that a structural ambivalence can be identified, such that consumers have both a need to know and an impulse to forget the origins of the foods they eat. © 1998, MCB UP Limited