Our bodies are made of pizza--food and embodiment among children in Kentucky

Abstract

The aims of this qualitative article are to describe children's food-related practices and meanings and to explore how food-related practices embody meanings of food, age, and gender in children's everyday lives. Relationships between practices and meanings are examined from an embodiment perspective. The data were collected from one class of fourth-grade children (N = 24) in central Kentucky by a mix of ethnographic research methods. The participating children's food-related practices and meanings reflected a categorization into healthy and "junk" food, likes and dislikes, meals and snacks, children and adults, and masculine and feminine. The children's food discourse focused on preferences and they based their eating on a three meal pattern. Both the girls and boys strongly identified with "junk" food and were not interested in eating in a healthy manner. Results suggest that the children used foods to differentiate adults from children, but they had not completely embodied gendered food meanings.