Negotiating the meaning of convenience in adolescents' food practices

Convenience foods have emerged under the guise of comfort, alleviating time pressures and requiring minimal competences from consumers. The global indus-try of convenience foods is increasingly shaping consumer tastes and competences, while education for developing food related competences, e.g. through home economics education, have been expunged from school curricula. Alongside, children participate less in food preparation in households, which limits their possibilities obtaining food related skills. Consequently, adolescents are becoming illiterate in food matters and they are increasingly unable to prepare non-processed food. Convenience foods have become a normalized part of adolescents’ everyday life, even though being associated with health drawbacks, as they contain higher levels of salt and saturated fats. Therefore, convenience food remains a contested topic. The central aim of this paper is, thus, to scrutinize how adolescents deliberate convenience with regard to their food practices. To this end, the paper builds on two theoretical bodies of literature: on the new sociolo-gy of childhood including children as active participants in research, and on sociology of consumption conceiving consumption as social practices with practitio-ners constructing meaning in consumption processes. Empirical data for this paper are collected in a Dutch high school context following a participatory appro-ach in form of derivate focus group discussions. As there is no explicit food education in Dutch high schools, data are collected in cooperation with an organisa-tion that organises workshops on food related topics in schools. Data will be gathered during autumn 2013 from different food-related exercises within a clas-sroom context, as well as from observations during workshops. The results are expected to contribute an understanding of how adolescents in a Dutch high school context discuss the meaning of their convenience food practices. This assists further critical reflection on the impact of the current global-industrial food provision system to education and ultimately society.