The Nation's Diet by Anne Murcott

Author:Anne Murcott [Murcott, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Social Work
ISBN: 9781317884804
Google: ZXSMDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-10-08T04:47:02+00:00

Understanding and perceptions

An important factor in the way families and home managers react to dietary change on the part of family members might be the degree of ‘legitimacy’ that the change has in their perception or which can be claimed for it. Although this term itself was rarely used, it is apparent that specific factors or events were used to legitimate the change in diet. In certain cases the ‘legitimacy’ was automatic in that all members of the family had negotiated and agreed to the change for the same reasons and according to the same rules. For example, in a family in which the diet changer was a diabetic, it was agreed by members of the family that certain foods, sweets for example, which the diet changer could not eat, would be banned from the house to avoid temptation.

A diet recommended by a health professional enjoyed an authority that an individual decision did not have. If this involved a clear medically diagnosed condition, the authority was even greater. For example, in a family in which a member had changed diet for medical reasons, the home manager who was responsible for all food-related tasks commented that: ‘We have to take the diet seriously because it was prescribed by the doctor. We try to stick to the diet sheet.’

In contrast, diet changes were more likely to be challenged in some way in cases where one member of the family had made their own personal decision to change. It is significant, however, that most dietary change was regarded by family members in the stage two sample as legitimate whether a medical, vegetarian or slimming diet. Our finding did not bear out those of researchers such as Amato and Partridge (1989) who found a certain degree of conflict and tension, even if in only a small minority of cases, surrounding the adoption of a vegetarian diet by a family member. The small number of vegetarians in our stage two sample, however, may have precluded our uncovering this sort of finding.

Legitimacy also took the form either of the ‘test of time’ whereby the new diet had to be sustained for sufficiently long to ‘prove’ the diet changer was serious about the change, or through a ‘proof of commitment’, for example, by joining a slimming club, particularly if this involved paying a fee. In one family, in which a teenage girl had become a vegetarian, the home manager initially refused to adapt her cooking to accommodate the needs of her daughter. However, after a period of time it was judged that the diet changer had shown that she was serious about the new diet and meals were adapted for her accordingly.

The process of absorbing a new diet into the family’s established practice often involved claims of acceptability which played down ideas of oddness or peculiarity that might be associated with it. In many cases such claims were associated with the introduction of understandings and explanations which implied that little or no real change had been made

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