Evolution of Social Ties around New Food Practices

This local focus has suddenly been placed at the heart of current events, along with the strengthening of relational ties around meals and questions about food issues, with the Covid-19 health crisis and the experience of lockdown. Chapter 7, By Way of an Epilogue: “Eating Together” in the Time of Covid-19 , sheds light on what this current period has changed and contributed to the book’s reflections and research conducted, for the most part, before the crisis broke out. Four main points structure what the health crisis has generated and revolutionized in our eating habits and in the social influences at play. This chapter first describes the main changes in our eating habits and practices. It shows how digital tools have allowed us to maintain the link and overcome the difficulties generated by physical confinement, as well as their limits. It explores the changes or reinforcements of convictions and principles of life following the awareness of health, societal and environmental issues provoked or reinforced by the crisis. Finally, it returns to the question of locality, social proximity and reinforced ties within groups or communities in response to the challenges imposed by the experiences of lockdown.

The Conclusionsummarizes the contributions of the book in a cross-functional manner and proposes new avenues. The academic reflections and research presented aim to better understand the current evolution of socialization and the influence of communities on food practices, and to draw enlightening perspectives for the different actors, food companies or distributors, consumer associations and groups, or public authorities.

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Casabianca, F., Sylvander, B., Noël, Y., Béranger, C., Coulon, J.B., Giraud, G., Vincent, E. (2006). Terroir et typicité : propositions de définitions pour deux notions essentielles à l’appréhension des Indications Géographiques et du développement durable. Actes du VIème Congrès International des Terroirs Viticoles , 3–7.

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1 1.See Baromètre santé nutrition, available at: http://www.ireps-picardie.fr/News/News_Cres_OR2S/Newsletters2010/17newsavril2010/Barometre_nutrition.pdf.

2 2.A French acronym designating the Association for the Preservation of Local Farming. It usually involves a partnership between a group of consumers and a local farmer.

3 3.“Terroir” is a French term that derives from the Latin terra, meaning earth, land or soil. In this book, we use this term as there is no direct English translation. A terroir refers to “a delimited geographical area defined by a human community that has built up, over the course of its history, a set of distinctive cultural traits, knowledge and practices, based on a system of interactions between the natural environment and human factors. The know-how brought into play reveals an originality, confers a typicality and allows recognition for the products or services originating from this space and therefore for the people who live there” (Casabianca et al. 2006)”. See Chapter 6for further details on this term and its usage.

Margot DYEN1 and Lucie SIRIEIX2

1 Institut de Recherche en Gestion et en Économie (IREGE), University of Savoie Mont Blanc, Chambéry, France

2 UMR MoISA, Institut Agro-Montpellier SupAgro, France

What is eating well? There are many answers to this seemingly simple question. First of all, we need to define what we mean by “eating well”. Historically, the issue of health through food was, quite obviously, mainly dealt with by nutritionists, who had an almost exclusively metabolic and physiological approach to nutrition. This led to campaigns promoting a balanced diet, making individuals aware of the nature of the foods to be consumed according to their category (carbohydrates, fibers, proteins, etc.). This functional vision of food prevailed in France until the 1960s and was perpetuated in English-speaking countries, but the book Manger: Français, Européens et Américains face à l’alimentation (Fischler and Masson 2008) shows how, contrary to this vision, the French preferred to conceive food another way. Today, nutritionists are increasingly interested in the issues of social relations around food and highlight that they are determining factors in a balanced diet. Therefore, eating well does not only depend on what we eat, it is also taking the time to sit down, in the company of people who allow us to enjoy a good time. It is also about sharing a dish, about a family meal established at well-defined times. This change can be seen in the recommendations that are made and the French National Nutrition and Health Plan ( Plan National Nutrition Santé , PNNS). “Eat and Move” campaign devotes an entire section to this dimension. Thus, eating together is now part of the promotion of eating well, which is no longer just a balanced diet, but an “art of living”. Eating together helps in regulating food intake and invites people to cook more and to take more time to eat, which in turn helps in better perceiving the signals of satiation. As mentioned above, this “art of living” is particularly central to French culture, whereas English-speaking societies have retained a vision that is focused on the nutritional characteristics of food.

In the context of this book, which asks the question “Can we still eat together?”, this chapter is therefore not about all the recommendations of the PNNS but about a specific recommendation: eating together .

Eating together underlines the PNNS’s concerns, as will be detailed in section 1.2. However, this recommendation is not supported by the PNNS. In order to better support these practices of eating together , it is therefore necessary to better understand them and to question the conditions of their implementation. To do this, we adopt a practice-based approach in this chapter to understand how individuals eat together: a qualitative study conducted with 23 participants is presented in section 1.3. Section 1.4more specifically addresses the questions “what are the materials, skills and meanings associated with these practices?” Section 1.5focuses on the interactions between these three elements – materials, necessary skills and associated meanings – to show that together they can give rise to particular practices or help overcome obstacles to eating together . On this basis, in section 1.6, we examine the links between eating together and well-being, and in section 1.7, we open up perspectives for accompanying or facilitating eating together practices.

Since 2001, France has had a real public policy targeting food, through the Plan National Nutrition Santé (PNNS, French National Nutrition and Health Plan). This initiative, launched by Prime Minister François Fillon in December 2000, had as its general objective “to improve the health status of the population by acting on the major determinant represented by nutrition” (Hercberg 2006). The PNNS materials include food guides, poster campaigns, press articles, support documents and television campaigns. Most of the communication tools are aimed at the general public, but some of the productions are intended for health professionals. The PNNS is intended to be applied in all areas of food consumption, with interventions in schools, health systems, the workplace, neighborhoods and cities, as well as in collective catering. The overall goal of the PNNS is to “contribute to the creation of an overall nutritional environment, facilitating positive choice for the health of consumers” (Chauliac 2011). As a public policy, the PNNS is equipped with evaluation systems to assess the effects of its actions. Thus, it “integrates the regular evaluation of its quantified objectives and, as much as possible, of the actions or measures it implements (effectiveness indicators or process evaluation)”. Its objectives can be summarized in four main points: