Food practices as situated action
Rob Comber, Jettie Hoonhout, Aart van Halteren, Paula J. Moynihan, Patrick L. Olivier · 2013
Household food practices are complex. Many people are unable to effectively respond to challenges in their food environment to maintain diets considered to be in line with national and international standards for healthy eating. We argue that recognizing food practices as situated action affords opportunities to identify and design for practiced, local and achievable solutions to such food problems. Interviews and shop-a-longs were carried as part of a contextual inquiry with ten households. From this, we identify food practices, such as fitting food, stocking up, food value transitions, and having fun with others and how these practices are enacted in different ways with varied outcomes. We explore how HCI might respond to these practices through issues of social fooding, the presence of others, conceptions about food practices and food routines.