Chapter 8Unequal EatingThe Context of Daily Meals
—
Ewa Jarosz
Eating, in common understanding, is associated with what is on the plate, and is usually considered from the perspective of diet. The 50-year decline in the significance of set mealtimes that we showed in Chapter 1 is generally assumed to reflect a move in the direction of snacking and grazing, a trend that is regarded as deleterious from the perspective of diet and nutrition. The effect that our food, and the way we consume it, has on individual health and weight merits all the attention it receives from academic researchers as well as from popular media. The British case is of particular interest. The NHS website leaves no space for doubt: ‘Britain: “the fat man of Europe”’, the headline goes, introducing gloomy statistics about soaring obesity rates in the UK. The population’s weight problems are blamed on ‘lifestyles, including our reliance on the car, TVs, computers, desk-bound jobs and high-calorie food’. This discourse, predominantly associated with calorie intake, the nutritional value of food and the particular health outcomes of different kinds of diet, dominates the way we think about eating. It is framed in terms of healthy or unhealthy eating, and typically equated only with what is being consumed. What is missing from these narratives is, paradoxically, the act of eating itself – an act that carries much social information and meaning, regardless of the type of food consumed.
Thinking outside the plate
What, then, is eating? First of all, eating is a purposeful activity performed by individuals. It requires that a given amount of time be allocated to it. How much time is allocated to eating depends both on individual preferences and time constraints. Eating has a spatial and temporal location, and is usually done several times during a day, in various circumstances. Eating breakfast in the morning at home and having lunch in a work canteen accompanied by other co-workers imply different social and environmental experiences, even if in both cases the person eats a sandwich and coffee. Of course, different eating occasions are usually associated with different foods as well, but it is the meal content that is determined by the ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘with whom’ it happens, and not the other way around. This simple fact is easy to forget when we focus primarily on what is on the plate.
Secondly, eating practices are shaped by cultural and social norms, reflecting the values and priorities of a given society. They therefore provide us with a barometer of social change and an indicator of lifestyle differences. For example, the role and meaning of food for the French is clearly reflected in their eating patterns, which are substantially different from how Americans eat. The USA is generally considered the cradle of fast eating: Americans eat more quickly, and are more likely both to replace meals with snacks and to have higher levels of anxiety related to food. Eating is designed to be functional, quick and efficient,1,2 and they spend on average only around 60 minutes per day on this activity. The opposite seems to be true for countries such as France3 or Armenia,4 where eating takes roughly twice as long as in the US, is regarded as a pleasurable activity, and is also associated with national identity. Great Britain is positioned somewhere between continental Europe and the US. Eating in Britain takes longer than in the US (at 88 minutes per day), but slightly less time than in most of the other European countries. Eating behaviours reflect social inequalities within a single society, too. The eating behaviours of individuals with higher social status tend to be healthier, and include a more diverse diet. One of the main focuses of this chapter is on social-class differences in eating time and behaviour in the contemporary UK.
Thirdly, eating is predominantly a social activity. In the majority of cases, food is consumed in the company of others, and this often taken-for-granted fact has tremendous social significance. Having a meal together brings people closer, creates a sense of belonging, and also affects what is eaten. Eating is ultimately a bonding activity, and this is especially important in the case of families. Family meals have been shown to contribute substantially to the health and wellbeing of family members, particularly children. Healthy or unhealthy eating practices in later life are known to be strongly associated with what was on the family table in childhood.
Last but not least, eating is an important source of daily enjoyment – or, in other words, it imparts small daily pleasures. It acts as an immediate mood enhancer, and it is on average one of the most enjoyed activities in the 2015 UK time-use survey.
Despite the cross-national differences in eating times and behaviours referred to above, some common trends have also been identified. One of the more important is the recent decline in the amount of time people spend in the preparation and consumption of meals, and the increase in the frequency of eating out. These tendencies are associated with modern lifestyles, which have been described as busier and more challenging in terms of coordinating different social relationships and activities. Establishing regular eating routines is certainly more difficult now than several decades ago, when full-time female employment was less common and working hours were more predictable. Feeling pressed for time due to busy work schedules and the associated challenges in maintaining work-life balance encourages people to move eating to a secondary role; that is, to replace meals with snacks. Those under greater time pressure are more likely to cut down on their mealtime or even skip some meals entirely. So what exactly can eating patterns tell us about modern British lives? Perhaps more than one might expect.
The focus in this chapter is on meals considered as any episode of eating recorded in the diary as a primary activity (i.e. the main activity at a given point in time), as opposed to snacking (defined in this chapter as eating recorded as a secondary activity). The reason for focusing on meals rather than snacking is that regular meals are strongly affected by social norms and interaction, while snacking does not play such an important social role and, in fact, might be considered as a way to skip a meal while still satisfying hunger.
Social-class differences in eating in the UK
Social class has been associated with eating behaviours in many ways. Firstly, individuals from different classes have been shown to display preferences for different types of food. Furthermore, individual social status has been associated with both attitudes and behaviour in relation to food and eating. For example, some very insightful qualitative studies report reduced expectations for family and individual meals among respondents with lower social status.5 Eating may be experienced as a way to satisfy basic bodily needs, without providing adequate nutrition, but also without meeting social needs or boosting personal enjoyment. In addition, lower-status occupational groups have less freedom in choosing when to work. Inflexibility of work schedules and greater work–family conflict have been shown to negatively affect the number of meals eaten and prepared at home, as well as their nutritional quality. For example, fast food might be used to alleviate time pressure and act as a compensation for everyday stresses in poorer families. Similar behaviour is less common among middle-class individuals, who seem on average to attach greater importance to eating. They are more likely to make the effort to eat together and have regular meals, including breakfast. They also pay greater attention to what is consumed in terms of its nutritional value.6 Furthermore, in middle-class families, meals are more likely to be treated as valuable times to interact with children and instil in them particular eating habits. Taking all of these factors into consideration, it is no surprise that there is an association between socio-economic status and healthy eating practices, as well as between socio-economic status and obesity risks,7 with those lowest in the social hierarchy being more likely to struggle with weight issues.
Analysis of the UK 2014–15 time-use data shows that working-class respondents allocate least time to eating compared to managers and professionals, or people in intermediate occupations.8 They report around 83 minutes per day; nearly 12 minutes less than those in the highest class category. These class disparities in the average duration of meals might reflect either a shorter time spent in each meal, or having fewer meals over the day. In fact, in the case of the UK data, it is both. Working-class individuals spend, on average, less time on each meal occasion and also eat significantly fewer meals per day. It is a fact that the number of meals per day has been linked with individual weight status: more frequent eating, whether it is meals or snacks, has been found to be positively related to lower BMI values.9 Sometimes snacks are consumed in place of meals, but in the case of the UK working-class, that is not the case. Working class respondents do not report more episodes of snacking than individuals from the other two social classes. Overall, taking both meals and snacks into account, they report significantly fewer episodes of eating over a day.
However, crude measures such as the average duration of eating episodes and the number of meals do not reflect all the factors that might contribute to class differentiation in eating patterns. Various socio-demographic and work-associated characteristics, such as different working arrangements, might contribute to time shortages or difficulties with schedule coordination while planning a meal. Figure 8.1 shows the mean predicted number of meals per day from a multivariate model controlling for individuals’ social class, weekly working time, shift work, and basic demographic and household characteristics.
Number of meals per day: predicted averages for various socio-economic and demographic indicators, UK (2015)
The most pronounced differences in the average number of meals per day, when holding the other variables constant, are differences by age group. These show that older people are more likely to have three regular meals a day (less likely to skip breakfast!), and younger people to have fewer. Nearly all of these differences between age categories are statistically significant. These differences by age are most likely to be due to life-stage specificity; however there may also be some effect of generational differences in normative values around traditional set mealtimes.
Paid working hours matter too, but differences are statistically significant only between those who work the longest hours, who eat fewer meals per day, compared to those working less than 20 hours per week, who eat more meals per day. Full-time versus part-time work does not make a difference (when controlling for the number of hours worked). On the other hand, what does play an important role is shift work. Those who work in shifts report significantly fewer meals than respondents with more traditional working patterns. The disruption of the natural circadian rhythm has been blamed for the higher incidence of certain health issues, including cardiovascular disease, among shift workers.10 The findings reported here also suggest that having non-standard working hours can make it more difficult to arrange time for eating. Needless to say, skipping meals is regarded as a health risk, and research shows it is associated with heavier body weights.
Even when working characteristics are controlled for, the effect of social class remains significant. Working-class individuals have significantly fewer meals than managers and professionals, and working arrangements do not explain these class differences in eating patterns. Previous research cited here has cast much light on the topic; class differences are likely to be due to the combination of lifestyle factors, values and priorities, as well as attitudes towards food.
Finally, more frequent meals eaten over the days of the weekend might reflect fewer temporal constraints on those days (mostly due to much less paid work being performed over the weekend) as well as the existence of certain family-related weekend rituals, such as Sunday family dinners.
Getting round the table: social context and location
Duration and frequency of meals reflect, respectively, the amount of time allocated to eating overall, and how often one is able to arrange time for meals. However, what is probably more important from the perspective of an individual is not for how long or how frequently they eat, but rather where and with whom they do it. Even with regard to the purely nutritional aspects of eating, meal location and social setting make a difference. Eating at home means consuming less fat and salt than eating out, and portions tend to be smaller than those served in restaurants.
The social context of eating has also been shown to affect dietary intake. Interestingly, although people tend to eat more in the company of family or friends, research suggests that countries where social meals are more common have lower obesity rates. Social eating can be used to refer either to eating in the company of people from outside of the household (referred to below as social meals), or to having a meal with one’s family (referred to as family meals). Though different, both convey important social meaning and are significant building blocks of the interpersonal relations within an individual’s closest social milieu. Social eating in general seems to be beneficial. It can improve one’s mood, and fosters a sense of belonging and connectedness. Taking these multiple benefits into account, it is interesting to know how social eating is differentiated by social status.
It turns out that there are significant differences in the frequency of social meals by social class. When we consider meals eaten with non-household members, differences between weekdays and weekends are clear. This difference is even more pronounced when we analyse social meals eaten out of home (shown in Figure 8.2). On weekdays, managers and professionals eat out with non-household members significantly more often than others. It is likely that weekday meals reflect differences in the type of work and working environment. Higher-status occupations might involve institutionalized eating occasions (e.g. business lunches). On the other hand, social meals may not be convenient or even possible in some types of jobs, in particular when one works in shifts, which is more common among the working class. Tellingly, when all social meals (i.e. those eaten at home as well as out of home) are considered, class differences are virtually non-existent at weekends (not shown). It is likely that, while the character of paid employment and occupational characteristics shapes eating patterns on weekdays, the nature of out-of-work relationships with family and friends determines the frequency of social meals at the weekend. On the other hand, class differences again become visible at the weekend when only meals eaten out of home are considered (8.2). In general, regardless of the social context of the meal, managers and professionals are more likely to eat out than other classes, and this holds for both weekdays and weekends.
Average number of social meals eaten out-of-home per day by social class, UK (2015)
Family meal time
Perhaps even more important than social meals are the meals shared with household members. Family meals merit special attention due to their social importance and meaning for the family. They are a key social institution which not only strengthens the bonds between family members but also shapes young people’s eating patterns in later life. Sociological studies show substantial differentiation in the importance attributed to family meals by social class. Middle-class individuals are more likely to eat together with their family members, and to make the effort to coordinate schedules in order to do so. In contrast, working-class people tend to consider eating together as less important – meals are more likely to be approached in a functional way, as an occasion for food intake, rather than an opportunity for family interaction. Such differences in attitudes and behaviours are likely to affect the functioning of individual family members as well as the family as a whole. Research shows a positive relationship between the frequency of a family getting together around the table to eat and the cognitive performance of the children. At the same time a negative relationship has been found between the frequency of eating with family members and the risk of child obesity, which points to social context being important for individual health outcomes too.
As we have shown, the frequency of eating at home with household members is clearly associated with social class. However, unlike in the case of social meals, class differences in family meals are significant for weekends only (shown in Figure 8.3). At weekends, working-class individuals have significantly fewer family meals than professionals and managers or people in intermediary occupations. Relatedly, due to the lower number of family meals, working-class families spend less time together around the table (not shown). Differences in the frequency of at-home family meals are not balanced out by differences in eating out with family members. As mentioned earlier, eating out is generally more common among managers and professionals, and eating out with the family is no exception.
So far, only descriptive statistics about family meals have been presented. However, the number of family meals is likely to be related to household composition (the more people there are, the less easy it is to coordinate with all of them) as well as individual working patterns and working time, all of which might be differentiated by class. In a multivariate model controlling for the effects of those variables, as well as for basic demographics, class differences remained significant – those in the intermediary and working classes have significantly fewer meals with their household members than is the case for managers and professionals. So what consequences might these class disparities have? A lower frequency of family meals might have an effect on the way a family functions, as well as on individual social capital and relations within an individual’s closest social milieu. Fewer family meals implies less time for family interaction around the table, and may mean that children get less supervision in regard of what they eat over the day – a finding reported in qualitative studies on class differences in eating.
Average number of family meals eaten at home, weekdays and weekends, by social class, UK (2015)
There is nothing particularly surprising about the effects of the other variables in the model on the frequency of family meals. While holding other things constant, this frequency is negatively related to shift working. Shift work is likely to make it more difficult for family members to coordinate their schedules and, as a result, to sit together around the table. Individuals are also more likely to eat with other household members in slightly bigger households – in this case there are more potential partners to have a meal with. Weekends also see more episodes of family meals.
One consequence of the fact that working-class individuals are less likely to eat together with their families as well as less likely to eat with people from outside the household (as discussed in the previous section) is that they are also more likely to eat their meals alone. On average, 28 out of every 100 meals working-class people consume are solitary. In the case of managers and professionals, it is 23 per 100, and respondents in intermediary positions have around one fifth of their meals alone.
Breakfast of champions?
The fact that working-class respondents report having fewer meals per day, as shown earlier in this chapter, suggests that some of the routine daily meals must be being skipped. It turns out that fewer working-class individuals record eating any of the regular daytime meals (breakfast, lunch or dinner) compared to the other two classes (Figure 8.4). At the same time, they are more likely to eat food late at night (‘supper’). Interestingly, it does not matter whether we consider weekdays or weekends; class differences in this respect are stable across the week. This suggests that this difference is not an effect of paid work schedules, but is, rather, related to class-related lifestyle characteristics.
While skipping meals in general is thought to have an impact on individual health and wellbeing, the importance of one meal in particular has been emphasized in academic research and healthy eating guidelines. Breakfast seems to be associated with certain lifestyle choices as well as important health outcomes. First of all, having breakfast has been linked with lower BMI values.11 Secondly, giving up on the first meal of the day has been associated with numerous unhealthy lifestyle factors such as lack of exercise, smoking, or substance abuse, both in adults and adolescents.12 It seems that, while having lunch is more likely to reflect work schedules and conventions, breakfast is more related to personal choices and the home environment. Interestingly, sociological studies have also reported class differences in the importance attributed to having breakfast. Middle-class respondents put greater emphasis on the first meal of the day, as well as on having it together with their families, suggesting greater emphasis on adherence to healthy eating guidelines and to the social importance of breakfast.
These effects of class on the eating of breakfast are supported in multivariate analysis. Holding all other factors constant, people in routine and manual occupations are more likely to skip breakfast. Since both shift work and working part-time are held constant, this tendency to skip breakfast is likely to be related to non-employment factors, such as the lesser perceived importance of regular meals, or lower levels of preoccupation with healthy eating, or with eating in general – all of which have been reported in earlier studies. Other factors associated with a higher probability of reporting having eaten breakfast are older age, working part-time, and a weekend diary day. The fact that older people are less likely to skip breakfast had been reported in earlier research. Part-time work is mostly performed by adults with children, who might make more effort to maintain healthier eating patterns; in their case the morning meal is likely to involve other family members too. On the other hand, working in shifts was associated with a higher chance of skipping breakfast. Weekend days in general allow more time for eating due to fewer time constraints related to paid employment, so the average higher incidence of eating breakfast at the weekends is not particularly surprising.
Figure 8.4 Meal types eaten, by social class, UK (2015)
Managerial and professional occupation
Intermediate occupation
Routine and manual occupation
In sum, working-class individuals in the UK have less healthy eating patterns – both from the point of view of physical and of social health. They tend to eat less frequently, including having fewer family and social meals, and are more likely to eat solitary meals. They are also more likely to skip regular daytime meals, among them breakfast. On the other hand, they report eating late at night more frequently than others. Over the week, working-class respondents dedicate less overall time to eating than either intermediate or managerial/professional classes. On average, they spend around 12 minutes less eating per day than managers and professionals, amounting to nearly 1 hour 30 minutes per week. Considering that this time is taken out mainly from social and family meals, that means almost 1 hour 30 minutes less interaction with friends, colleagues or family members around the table per week.
Happy meals
While health and obesity risks certainly justify all the research attention they receive, they do not exhaust the list of important outcomes of particular food choices and eating behaviours. Much less attention has been focused, for example, on the effect of meals on individual mood – especially when it comes to meal settings, rather than their nutritional content. Eating is usually enjoyable, and this is reflected in the UK data in which eating is, on average, the most enjoyable of all daily activities (see Chapter 14). However, not every meal brings equal enjoyment. To investigate what factors are associated with meal enjoyment we used a multivariate model to analyse the enjoyment of specific meal occasions. The basic activity settings (when, where, and with whom a meal happens) were included in order to show the net effect of each of these characteristics on mean enjoyment levels.
It seems, perhaps not surprisingly, that what brings the greatest immediate enjoyment is having meals in the company of others. Family meals, and meals with others from outside of the household (presumably friends), are enjoyed the most. By contrast, solitary eating is enjoyed the least. Eating out ranks with eating in company in terms of enjoyment. Compared to eating at home, eating in a restaurant leads to significantly higher levels of enjoyment. Unfortunately, given the higher levels of sugar, salt and additives included in restaurant food, health and enjoyment do not always come together! This contradiction is reversed for the first meal of the day; despite the fact that breakfast is considered an important meal from a nutritional point of view, it is not considered a very enjoyable meal on average. All other meals receive significantly higher enjoyment scores than breakfast. The reason might be that, on the whole, mornings are more hurried and stressful due to the upcoming events of the day – primarily preparation of children for school and paid work. Perhaps for similar reasons meals eaten at work or school are also among the least enjoyed.
Since we have already seen that social classes differ in respect of the timing, social context and frequency of meals, it is intuitively likely that they would also experience different overall levels of meal enjoyment. This is certainly the case, but the direction of the effect might seem puzzling – managers and professionals who have, on average, more social and family meals, and who eat out more often, report the lowest average levels of meal enjoyment. Moreover, when other variables relating to meal activity (such as location, type of meal, weekend or weekday meal, and the social context of the meal) are held constant, these class differences remain. That is, managers and professionals enjoy their meals the least compared to the intermediate and working classes, and the reasons for this class differentiation seem not to be related to meal patterns – that is, the where, when, or with whom they eat.
We might speculate, therefore, that these differences may be due to different attitudes towards eating in general. Middle-class individuals are more likely to have healthier eating patterns and make more effort to eat healthy foods.13 This might conceivably contribute to higher expectations of meal quality, which might lead to higher stress and feelings of pressure. On the other hand, comfort eating, such as eating out in fast-food outlets, has been described as one of the strategies employed by poorer families to help them cope with everyday stresses. Such behaviours might have a negative effect on physical health in the long run, but they are likely to trigger immediate mood improvement – even if only in the short term.
People’s attitudes towards food consumption and their association with class-specific daily eating patterns is an issue that underlies all the analyses presented in this chapter. The results have supported the finding of previous authors that social classes in the UK differ in their food preferences. But, as we have shown, eating behaviours clearly matter not only for individual nutritional health, but also for the quality of social and, in particular, family relations. By using the time-use diary data, we are also able to show how the different classes eat – that is for how long, how often, and in what social and spatial settings they eat. All of these dimensions are likely to be linked to the role that food plays in particular social structural locations and in specific lifestyle choices. Class-related values and priorities regarding home and family life have been shown to either promote healthy eating patterns or the opposite – that is, to demotivate individuals from eating regular meals, especially in a situation of time shortage. It may be that the middle classes are more influenced by considerations of social desirability in their attitudes towards food, focusing more on health and what is seen as ‘proper’ in their social milieu with regard to meal preparation, food consumption and its role in child upbringing. On the other hand, working-class people might be more likely to seek pleasure in eating, or resort to comfort food when faced with stress or other life challenges that they are likely to encounter more often than their middle-class counterparts. Whatever lies behind class differences in eating behaviours, it is worth more research attention, and might prove useful in the understanding of why obesity rates are higher among particular social groups.