Hidden inequalities of ease: A practice-theoretical approach to understanding the links between social deprivation and diet

Abstract

Our comparative study uses practice-based understandings of behaviour to expose the hidden ‘inequalities of ease’ which underlie healthy eating behaviours in different socioeconomic circumstances. This adds depth to the well-established direct impacts of socioeconomic factors through illuminating the more subtle contextual factors which enhance these effects and reduce the ease of healthy eating in contexts of deprivation. Drawing on in-depth multi-method research with 25 mothers living in two contrasting areas of Bristol and a subsequent survey with 310 respondents, we illustrate how the materials, competences and meanings which shape our eating practices are socioeconomically patterned. What is the impact of socioeconomic differences in mundane materials such as dining tables? Or in the risks involved in developing skills related to unprocessed food preparation? Or in the prioritisation of ‘health’ among the many meanings of good food? In all of these examples we show that the materials, competences and meanings which are more likely to be associated with the practices of those who live in deprived areas serve to systematically skew easy unthinking eating habits away from the minimally-processed fruits and vegetables which were universally understood to be key to healthy eating. Applying a practice lens to inequalities in healthy eating in this way provides novel insights into how deeply structural inequalities are embedded in the microcosms of everyday life and how they affect the ease of eating healthily through shaping what we do unthinkingly on ‘autopilot’. Education and awareness-raising interventions which ignore the systematic skewing of easy unthinking eating practices cannot close the healthy eating gap, instead serving to justify blaming those who are already most disadvantaged for the inequalities in preventable ill-health which tax their wellbeing and take years off their lives.