Food & Health Alliance

Workshop 1. Food culture

The potato is an undervalued emblem of Scottish food culture, workshop participants agreed. And they went on to call for a new drive to celebrate and promote the ‘tatty’ as a healthy, staple food for Scottish people.

Members felt the role of the potato had declined, with the vegetable increasingly consumed in its saltier, fattier and least healthy forms such as chips and crisps.

Many children these days, it was speculated, had little idea of where the potato comes from and how it is grown. Yet in some rural areas it was still highly valued and this needed to be built on.

In a wide-ranging discussion about the country’s food culture, participants also focused on issues of poverty, transport and access, eating on the hoof and supermarket profits – all of which were felt to have an influence on less healthy eating habits.

One of the key themes that emerged from the workshops was understanding how real people eat and live and getting to grips with the factors that make real lives more complicated than behaviour models or policy papers.

Participants were also reminded it was important to distinguish between Scotland’s ‘reputation as the land of food and drink’ and the reality of food consumption and production in the country.

‘Food culture is shaped by all kinds of factors such as income, housing, upbringing, work conditions and the local economy,’ workshop leader Tom MacMillan, from the Food Ethics Council, said.

The point about understanding food culture was not necessarily to change it, he added. ‘It might instead be to find better ways of living with food cultures. Food cultures can define and cement social relations – as we face challenges around public health and sustainability these relationships are crucial to finding solutions.’

Participants looked at each part of the food chain from primary production through to waste disposal. And they were encouraged to distinguish between the following aspects of food culture:

• What we think – attitudes, beliefs, ideas
• What we do – practice, habits, behaviour
• When we do it – events, occasions, rituals, routines
• Stuff it involves – products, things

Poverty and low budgets were felt to have a big influence on unhealthy eating. Some believed that only radical solutions such as more redistributive taxation or changes to working practices would have an effect, noting that having discretionary income was the key to shaping food purchases. But most accepted this was not on the political agenda at the moment so the focus would need to be on ameliorating things such as household budgeting and planning meals.

Participants also suggested problems of transport and food access were helping to foster unhealthy and unsustainable eating habits. Some solutions suggested included urban grow your own projects and regular, accessible farmers’ markets as well as new concepts such as Landshare.

An ageing population would only exacerbate access problems in the future, it was feared. Members welcomed initiatives encouraging cooking together and sharing skills as a way of countering the ‘can’t cook, won’t cook’ mentality that seemed increasingly common among younger and middle aged people.

Another feature of today’s food culture was the increased tendency to ‘eat on the hoof’. There appeared to be a growing culture of ‘presenteeism’ in the workplace which encouraged staff to cut back on lunch ‘hours’ and to eat at their desk. This in turn reflected time pressures at home and at work but they all tended to perpetuate poor eating habits.

Many also worried that the growth of supermarkets and their focus on expanding profit were contributing to the sidelining of healthier foods.

Some said that corporate initiatives to promote healthy eating were merely tokenistic, suggesting that any benefits of healthy eating would be outweighed by unhealthy promotions. One participant observed that retailers were still offering cheap deals on drinks during Alcohol Awareness Week.

But others pointed to the many ways retailers had helped to promote healthy and sustainable eating. Examples were the significant cuts in saturated fats and salt in many processed foods as well as reductions in the use of plastic carrier bags.