Lund Thomas Bøker, Gronow Jukka
Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Rolighedsvej 25, Lokale 2.103, 1958 Frederiksberg, Denmark.
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, P.0. Box 24, Finland.
Appetite. 2014 Nov;82:143-53. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2014.07.004. Epub 2014 Jul 10.
There is a widely shared belief that contemporary eating culture is undergoing a process of 'destructuration' in which collective norms guiding temporal, social, and spatial aspects of eating as well as cuisine will decline or disappear. From another theoretical perspective one could argue that shared and regular patterns are quite resistant to change because they are functionally necessary for the organization and maintenance of social actions in everyday life. Using questionnaire data from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden from the years 1997 and 2012 we investigate whether culturally shared timing of eating rhythms has disappeared or declined. At the population-wide level, we find clear national peaks (occurring around breakfast, lunch, and to a lesser extent dinner) during which a great number, or even the majority, of people eat. These basic rhythms of eating are nationally specific and clearly identifiable in 1997 and 2012, and only small changes were found to have occurred over the period studied. Subsequent examination of within-country differences in daily eating rhythms identified a specific sub-population with very similar features in all countries. The sub-population deviates temporally from the collective peaks of eating, and in it conventional meal types such as breakfast and lunch are skipped to a higher extent, giving what we call an 'unsynchronized' eating pattern. Interestingly, the pattern has become more common in all countries. While the growth of this sub-population may be a sign of a coming destructuration of meal culture, further analysis suggests this is not the case. Thus, we find clear socio-structural explanations for unsynchronized eating. It is related to the social coordination of work, and unsynchronized eating tends to be abandoned over the life course: with the establishment of a family, and old age, people tend to synchronize their eating habits with collective activities in society. Coupling this with the relatively modest growth of the unsynchronized pattern, and bearing in mind that it is a minority phenomenon, encompassing approximately one quarter of the population in 2012, we argue that an all-encompassing temporal destructuration will not develop. Additional analysis shows that the idea of a simultaneous rupture of eating culture on several dimensions (temporal, social, spatial, manners, cuisine) is doubtful. Thus, although, to a higher extent, individuals with an unsynchronized eating rhythm lack "manners" and eat more unhealthily, they do not display a higher degree of destructuration in the social and spatial dimensions of eating. Indeed, unsynchronized eating leads to fewer daily eating events, which contradicts the 'grazing' theory altogether.
人们普遍认为，当代饮食文化正在经历一个“解构”过程，在此过程中，指导饮食在时间、社会和空间方面以及烹饪的集体规范将会衰退或消失。从另一个理论视角来看，有人可能会认为，共享的、规律的模式相当抗拒变化，因为它们对于日常生活中社会行为的组织和维持具有功能上的必要性。利用1997年和2012年丹麦、芬兰、挪威和瑞典的问卷调查数据，我们研究了文化上共享的饮食节奏时间安排是否已经消失或衰退。在全国人口层面，我们发现了明显的全国性高峰（出现在早餐、午餐时间，晚餐时间的高峰程度稍低），在这些时段，大量甚至大多数人会进食。这些基本的饮食节奏在全国具有特异性，在1997年和2012年都清晰可辨，并且在所研究的时间段内仅发现了微小变化。随后对各国日常饮食节奏的国内差异进行的考察，确定了一个在所有国家都具有非常相似特征的特定亚群体。该亚群体在时间上偏离了集体进食高峰，并且在这个亚群体中，诸如早餐和午餐等传统餐食类型被跳过的程度更高，呈现出我们所说的“不同步”饮食模式。有趣的是，这种模式在所有国家都变得更加普遍。虽然这个亚群体的增长可能是餐食文化即将解构的一个迹象，但进一步分析表明并非如此。因此，我们发现了不同步饮食的明确社会结构解释。它与工作的社会协调有关，并且不同步饮食在人生历程中往往会被摒弃：随着家庭的建立以及步入老年，人们往往会使自己的饮食习惯与社会中的集体活动同步。再加上不同步模式的增长相对适度，并且要记住这是一种少数现象，在2012年约占人口的四分之一，我们认为不会出现全面的时间解构。额外的分析表明，饮食文化在几个维度（时间、社会、空间、礼仪、烹饪）上同时破裂的观点值得怀疑。因此，尽管在更高程度上，饮食节奏不同步的个体缺乏“礼仪”并且饮食更不健康，但他们在饮食的社会和空间维度上并没有表现出更高程度的解构。事实上，不同步饮食导致每日饮食事件减少，这与“随意进食”理论完全相悖。
