7 Food in children and young people’s lives
In the previous sections you learned about interdisciplinary research and advocacy on children and young people’s well-being relating to food. The reading in the next activity will expand on these ideas, focusing in particular on the choices that children and adults are expected to make and the contexts in which they are expected to make them. It focuses on four aspects of children and young people’s relationship with food.
- The discourses, moralities and identities around food.
- Children’s and young people’s control about their eating: their agency and autonomy.
- ‘Big Food’, or the role of the food industry in our diet.
- The construction of children’s desires about food and eating.
Activity 4
You should now read extracts from ‘Food in children and young people’s lives: ambiguous agency and contested moralities’ by Mimi Tatlow-Golden [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . As you read, consider the following questions:
- What different moralities and identities of food are discussed?
- How do food moralities and identities intersect with notions of ‘healthy’ choices?
- What is ‘generational positioning’ regarding food and eating?
These excerpts are taken from Mimi Tatlow-Golden’s chapter, ‘Food in children and young people’s lives: ambiguous agency and contested moralities’, in Montgomery, H. and Robb, M. (eds) (2018) Children and Young People’s Worlds, Bristol, Policy Press, pp. 231-46