A menzai étkezés mint rítus, különös tekintettel az asztali áldásokra = Nutrition or Eating? Food Rituals in Canteens, with Special Regard to Saying Grace

Juhász, Katalin (2023) A menzai étkezés mint rítus, különös tekintettel az asztali áldásokra = Nutrition or Eating? Food Rituals in Canteens, with Special Regard to Saying Grace. In: Menzadimenziók : A gyermek-közétkeztetés társadalmi beágyazottsága. Néprajztudományi Könyvtár (2). HUN-REN Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Néprajztudományi Intézet, Budapest, pp. 201-235. ISBN 978-963-567-070-3; 978-963-567-072-7

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Abstract

‘Nutrition’ and ’eating’ are seemingly related concepts. However, there is an important difference between them. ‘Nutrition’ is more biological and expresses the body’s need for nourishment to survive. ‘Eating’, on the other hand, is an occasion for nourishment: a performance. The dichotomy that hunger and nutrition are biological needs, and that the way to satisfy this need is culturally determined, arises every time nutrition and eating are discussed. Ingesting food in the here and now is a communicative activity, a custom, a function and specific code of a culture. When the legal background and dietetic recommendations for school meals are being created, little attention is paid to the conditions and ways children consume food with a scientifically determined nutritional composition. Therefore, we as ethnographers investigated with our own methods, among other things, the physical environment, logistics, and customs of catering and eating in school canteens. In this entire process, the allotted time as well as the communication about food and attitude towards food of the stakeholders – food service managers, cooks, suppliers, service staff, teachers accompanying children, children and their parents – are also important factors. Focusing on the communal mealtime rituals observed at the fieldwork sites, especially saying grace, the study explores how and in what versions all of these are implemented in the school canteen, and what effect they have on the attitude of the participants towards (canteen) food.

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