Routledge Children, Food and Nature: Organising Meals in Schools (Critical Food Studies)

Children and young people's food practices and lifestyles are perhaps more visible and contested than ever before. Increased levels of public and media debate concerning young people's health, leisure and dietry activities has led to a number of recent policy initiatives aimed at improving the quality and healthiness of meals offered in schools. However, very little is known about how these policies affect children's (and their families') food habits, and how they intervene in what children know, think and feel about food and where food comes from. Taking a Science, Technology and Society (STS) perspective, this book offers a groundbreaking and comparative research-based study on how the recent 'healthy meals' policies are affecting children's practices both in the UK and in Italy. By looking at the trajectories of connections and disconnections that food - understood as a liminal object - makes with children's bodies, other animals and plants, and by examining how these connections are enacted in children's food practices, the book offers insights in the complexities of children's learning about food and in the bio-politics around school meals in the UK and in Italy. The book advances the food consumption literature and school meals agenda and is essential reading for scholars, policy makers and practitioners working in food studies, education, children and youth studies, environmental studies and dietry studies.