| 1. |
- Berg, Gita, 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Aesthetic judgments and meaning-making during cooking in Home and Consumer Studies
- 2019
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Ingår i: Educare. - : Malmo University Library. - 1653-1868 .- 2004-5190. ; :2, s. 30-57
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In Swedish home and consumer studies (HCS), cooking forms apart of the core content, and students often experience the results in a sensuous way–by eating the food. Sensuous, or aesthetic, experiences may affect students’ meaning-making and thus what is learned within the subject. There is a lack of research concerning the aesthetic aspects of cooking in a learning context; therefore, this study aims to explore HCS students’ meaning-making by focusing on aesthetic judgments during formalized cooking practices. The research question is, in what ways do students use aesthetic judgments in meaning-making processes during cooking? The data comes from video-documented classroom observations where the students cook together. Using a pragmatic approach and practical epistemology analysis (PEA), three ways in which the students use aesthetic judgments are illustrated: as arguments in negotiations, as reference points when reactualizing experiences, and as nonverbal actions evaluating sensory qualities. Empirical examples exemplify how aesthetic judgments play a role in establishing power relations, entail social/normative values, and influence the “tacit knowing” of cooking. The study found that aesthetic experiences are integral and important in students’ meaning-making during cooking practices. Moreover, by adding a new classroom context to the methodology used, its applicability for investigating aesthetic experiences and meaning-making is confirmed and widened.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Berg, Gita, 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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“You fuel the car with gas, you fuel the body with food” – Educational functions of food for health in home and consumer studies
- 2024
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. - : Routledge. - 0031-3831 .- 1470-1170. ; 68:2, s. 189-203
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study aims to contribute to the understanding of food for health as educational content in Home and Consumer Studies (HCS), specifically targeting three educational functions: (i) qualification, (ii) socialization, and (iii) subjectification. Data came from a comprehensive case study, where one school class and two HCS teachers were followed during one school year. Fourteen classroom observations and eight teacher interviews were included. It is shown how qualification functions comprise nutrition knowledge and cooking skills, how socialization functions entail, e.g., dichotomous values of food as “good” or “bad,” and how conscious consumers who take personal responsibility for themselves and the environment become promoted subjects. Taken together, the results illustrate how educational content can have consequences beyond those intended. Based on the results, an argument is made about the relevance for HCS teachers to critically reflect on their teaching and its potential educational consequences.
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| 4. |
- Oljans, Emma, et al.
(författare)
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From nutrients to wellbeing identifying discourses of food in relation to health in syllabi
- 2018
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Ingår i: Pedagogy, Culture & Society. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1468-1366 .- 1747-5104. ; 26:1, s. 35-49
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Food and health have long had dominant position within the subject of Home Economics (HE) in Sweden. However, what constitutes a proper diet, and how it is associated with a healthy lifestyle changes over time. In this article, a discourse analytic approach combined with a didactic perspective are used as the theoretical frame. The aim is to explore how food in relation to health has been constructed within the syllabus of HE. Six HE syllabi from 1962 to 2011 were analysed. From the results three different discourses were identified and named after their main areas of focus: (i) the medical discourse, (ii) the consumer discourse and (iii) the human ecological discourse. Each discourse represents a different way of constructing food in relation to health, and different representations have dominated over the past fifty years. The construction of food in relation to health is thereby seen in its historical and cultural context according to what this knowledge content includes or excludes.
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| 5. |
- Olsson, Cecilia, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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Food that makes you different : the stigma experienced by adolescents with celiac disease
- 2009
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Ingår i: Qualitative Health Research. - : Sage Publications. - 1049-7323 .- 1552-7557. ; 19:7, s. 976-984
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- For adolescents with celiac disease (CD), a gluten-free diet(GFD) is crucial for health, but compliance is problematic andnoncompliance is common even among those aware of the risks.To better understand their lives with the disease, Swedish CDadolescents were invited to take part in focus group discussions.Data were analyzed for recurrent stigma-related themes acrossthe groups. Adolescents described an awareness of being differentfrom others that was produced by meal appearance and the pooravailability of gluten-free food. The GFD often required discussionsand special requests, so eating in public had the effect ofmaking an invisible condition visible, and thereby creatinga context for felt or enacted stigma. Maintaining invisibilityavoided negative consequences of stigma, and other strategieswere used to reduce the costs of visibility. The results ofthe study show that the GFD can produce stigma experiences inadolescence, and that dietary compliance (or lack thereof) canbe understood in terms of dealing with GFD concealment and disclosure.
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| 6. |
- Berg, Gita, 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Aesthetic Values in Home and Consumer Studies : Investigating the Secret Ingredient in Food Education
- 2023
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Education. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2504-284X. ; 8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Food is a part of everyday life, and formal food education is included in compulsory education in many countries, for example through the subject Home and Consumer Studies (HCS). While food education is often underpinned by public health concerns such as preventing non-communicable diseases and promoting cooking skills, there has been little focus on aesthetic aspects of teaching and learning about food. This study therefore aims to gain understanding of aesthetic values as a part of HCS food educational practices. Aesthetic values are here regarded as socially and culturally shared, and related to notions of pleasure and taste. As this study uses a pragmatist approach, aesthetic values are seen as constituted in encounters, encompassing experiencing individual(s), artifacts, and context. By thematically analyzing empirical data from an exploratory case study, including classroom observations, student focus groups, and teacher interviews, we show how values are constituted as culinary, production, and bodily aesthetics. Culinary aesthetics involved cooking processes, cooking skills, and presentation of food and meals. Production aesthetics involved foods’ origin and degree of pre-processing, whereas bodily aesthetics related to bodily consequences of eating. Aesthetic values were vital features of the educational practices studied and played a key role in bringing the practices forward. They also indicated what counted as valid, or desired, outcomes and thereby steered events in certain directions. The study highlights the significance of aesthetic values and argues in favor of acknowledging aesthetics in planning, undertaking, and evaluating HCS food education.
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| 7. |
- Berg, Gita, 1982-
(författare)
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Beyond the plate : Food and health, aesthetics and meaning-making in Home and consumer studies
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of this thesis is to cultivate understandings of how meanings regarding food and health are made within the school subject home and consumer studies (HCS). The thesis builds on empirical data generated through a comprehensive case study, where 12 students from one school class and their two teachers were followed in HCS over the course of a school year. The methods used were observations, interviews, focus groups, and document collection. This work comprises four papers, where Paper I covers students’ meaning-making during cooking with a focus on aesthetic judgments. The results of Paper I illustrate different ways in which the students used aesthetic judgments, and how aesthetics became integral to meaning-making. Paper II investigates food for health as educational content, using qualification, socialization, and subjectification as an analytical framework. The results exemplify how these three educational functions can be operationalized empirically, and how a given educational content opens up for meaning-making that goes beyond learning facts and skills. In Paper III, thematic analysis is used to gain an overview of which aesthetic values were constituted in the studied practices, and how. Thus, the central roles of aesthetics in HCS food education were further illustrated. Lastly, Paper IV investigates use of the plate model as a food educational tool, using three planes of analysis as a framework. The results demonstrate how the plate model can be useful in food and health education, but also that it needs to be used with caution, for example to avoid conveying a rigid message of “right” and “wrong” dishes. Taken together, the results of the four papers show how food was a central transactant in the studied practices, i.e., how the food itself became an important co-actor in the meaning-making processes. Second, the discrepancy between the students’ focus on immediate food experiences and the teachers’ instrumental orientation is highlighted. In summary, this thesis provides empirically grounded contributions to support food educational practices in general, and HCS subject didactics in particular. Additionally, it strengthens the position of HCS as a subject to be reckoned with in wider didactic contexts, as well as in the emerging field of disciplinary aesthetics.
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| 8. |
- Björnwall, Amanda, et al.
(författare)
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Eating Alone or Together among Community-Living Older People : A Scoping Review
- 2021
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Ingår i: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. - : MDPI. - 1661-7827 .- 1660-4601. ; 18:7
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research on healthy aging commonly concerns problems related to loneliness and food intake. These are not independent aspects of health since eating, beyond its biological necessity, is a central part of social life. This scoping review aimed to map scientific articles on eating alone or together among community-living older people, and to identify relevant research gaps. Four databases were searched, 989 articles were identified and 98 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. In the first theme, eating alone or together are treated as central topics of interest, isolated from adjoining, broader concepts such as social participation. In the second, eating alone or together are one aspect of the findings, e.g., one of several risk factors for malnutrition. Findings confirm the significance of commensality in older peoples’ life. We recommend future research designs allowing identification of causal relationships, using refined ways of measuring meals alone or together, and qualitative methods adding complexity.
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| 9. |
- Björnwall, Amanda, et al.
(författare)
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Perceptions and experiences of eating alone among community-living retired Swedes : Loss, routine and independence
- 2023
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Ingår i: Appetite. - : Elsevier. - 0195-6663 .- 1095-8304. ; 186
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The practice of eating together, commensality, is often considered as something positive in later life, particularly regarding peoples' nutritional status and psychosocial well-being. Eating alone, in contrast, is treated as a risk factor, although literature indicates that it is not necessarily something negative. Still, analyses that specifically target older peoples' varied experiences and notions of eating alone are scarce. This study has explored perceptions and experiences of eating alone among older people in Sweden, a country considered highly individualistic, yet with relatively low levels of loneliness in the older population. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 community-living and retired Swedes, 70-90 years of age. A thematic analysis identified three themes: i) 'Eating alone as a manifestation of loss'; ii) 'Eating alone as an everyday routine'; and iii) 'Eating alone as independence and contentment'. General perceptions of eating alone were often related to the current living situation (e.g., cohabiting or single-living). One key finding was an identified tension between the idea of eating alone as something problematic among those living and eating with a partner and the practical experience of an uncomplicated routine among those living and eating alone. Eating together is discussed as a possible social need for many, but perhaps not for all. Some can feel content with eating alone or even enjoy it. Future studies should approach potential disadvantages of eating alone among older people as an open empirical question that is likely to depend on both the individual and the cultural context.
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| 10. |
- Björnwall, Amanda, et al.
(författare)
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The impact of eating alone on food intake and everyday eating routines : A cross-sectional study of community-living 70- to 75-year-olds in Sweden
- 2024
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Ingår i: BMC Public Health. - : BioMed Central (BMC). - 1471-2458. ; 24:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BackgroundEating is fundamental not only to survival and health, but also to how humans organise their social lives. Eating together with others is often seen as the healthy ideal, while eating alone is highlighted as a risk factor for negative health outcomes, especially among older adults. This paper, therefore, investigates the relationship between the frequency and subjective experience of eating alone and food-related outcomes among 70- to 75-year-olds in Sweden.MethodsA survey was distributed to a nationally representative random sample of 1500 community-living in Sweden, aged 70–75 years. Two different constructs of eating alone (objective and subjective) were measured, along with the following food-related outcomes: a food index, intake of food groups, consumption of ready-made meals, number of main meals per day, and body mass index (BMI).ResultsIn total, 695 respondents were included in the final sample. A quarter of the respondents were categorised as eating alone, of which a small proportion reported that doing so bothered them. There were no associations between eating alone and food index scores, BMI, or intake frequencies of fruits and berries, or fish and shellfish. However, people eating alone were less likely to report eating three meals per day (OR: 0.53, CI: 0.37–0.76, p = 0.006), less likely to report higher intake frequencies of vegetables and snacks, sugary foods, and sweet drinks (adjusted OR: 0.68, CI: 0.48–0.95, p = 0.023 resp. OR: 0.59, CI: 0.43–0.81, p = 0.001), and more likely to report higher intake frequencies of ready-made meals (adjusted OR: 3.71, CI: 2.02–6.84, p < 0.001) compared to those eating together with others. The subjective experience of eating alone did not have an impact on food-related outcomes.ConclusionEating alone or with others played a role in participants’ food intake, and seemed to influence aspects of the organisation of everyday eating routines rather than overall dietary healthiness or weight status. Our findings add to the previous body of research on commensality, eating alone, and health among the older population, providing insights into the development of future health policies and research.
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