Children’s Food Practices in Families and Institutions

Book excerpt: This book brings together recent UK studies into children’s experiences and practices around food in a range of contexts, linking these to current policy and practice perspectives. It reveals that food works not only on a material level as sustenance but also on a symbolic level as something that can stand for thoughts, feelings, and relationships. The three broad contexts of schools, families and care (residential homes and foster care) are explored to show the ways in which both children and adults use food. Food is used as a means by which adults care for children and is also something through which adults manage their own feelings and relationships to each other which in turn impact on children’s experiences. The book examines the power of food in our daily lives and the way in which it can be used as a medium by individuals to exert power and resistance, establish collective identities and notions of the self and to express moralities about notions of 'proper' family routines and 'good' and 'healthy' lifestyle choices. It identifies inter-generational and intra-generational differences and commonalities in regard to the uses of and experiences around food across a range of studies conducted with children and young people. This book was published as a special issue of Children's Geographies.