Children’s Food? : Reflections on
Politics, Policy and Practices
Prof. Allison James
University of Sheffield.
Aims
 To explore “children’s food” as a cultural construct
that marks adult - child differences
 To examine implications for theorising
generational relations in late modernity
 To situate the concept of “ children’s food” in
wider policital/policy discourses
Generational relations
 Alanen (2001):
 the two generational categories of children and
adults are recurrently produced… through
relations of connection, and interaction, of
interdependence’ ( 2001: 21).
 Differential exercise of power
 Generational relations are part of the
biographies of families
“Children’s food” in England
 Growing separation adults and children reflected
in different foods
 “nursery” food
 Mennell (1985)

a matter of making them eat what was good for them, whether they
liked it or not. At worst, making them eat food to which they actually
felt an aversion was seen as a necessary part of breaking the child’s
peevish will’ (1985:296).
Victorian children’s diets -class
analysis
 …..the consequences for children of eating
‘complex and too solid
forms of food’ were ‘ the sick headaches and bilious attacks which
pursue their victim through half a lifetime, to be exchanged for gout or
worse’ (Thompson cited in Mennell 1985:297).
 ‘the best way
in which to give meat to girls is in the form of pain
roast or boiled joints. Elabourate entrees, rich and stimulating
sauces, and the like, may be left to temp the jaded palates if their
elders. Digestive troubles may ensure when over-rich food is
given’ ( cited in Mennel 1985: 297)
Food and English childhood?
 Children different from adults - food
prohibitions & prescriptions
 Health focus on children as becomings
 Later trickle down effects - school meal
system 1930s
 Children as the nation’s future

through their everyday involvement in children’s lives, welfare
bureaucracies of national and local government, and of
philanthropy, imposed what, to all intent and purposes, were certain
class dominated and ‘expert’ formulated concepts of childhood on
the general population’ ( Hendrick 1997: 50)
English Children’s food - 21st
century?




Index of generational relations in England
Family pubs c.f. adult restaurants
Different, specialised menu for children
Fast food, highly processed
Impact of food technology
 Development of industrial
food enables new foods
and new prescriptions/
prohibitions
 highly processed
 marketed & packaged
 Fast food/junk food
 New index of adult-child
relations
 New index of social class
relations
Food as universal index of
generation?
 France & other European societies little in evidence
 Generation indexed in other ways
CF
 Hunter-gather societies
 Children’s food is wild food
 children, who have to perform tasks outside the home and
the village and must cater for themselves, have a broad
knowledge of the potential foods and how to prepare them’
(de Garine 1993:165)
 Prohibited for adults:
 shameful, a backward symbol of poverty and unbecoming to
an individual attending school, an urbanite or the members of
Christian and Muslim “high” religions’ (de Garine 1993:165).
Sweets as “children’s food” (James 1979)
 Kets - rubbish, rotten
carcasse
 Kets- cheap sweets
 Kets as “inedible”
 Kets eaten inbetween meals
 Kets = food controlled
by children, not eaten
by adults
English Children’s food - 21st
century?
 Moral panic
 Recent policy
initiatives - childhood
obesity
 5 a day
 School dinner reforms
 Advertising bans/
restrictions
 Surveillance & control
Prohibitions…..
 'things like Sunny D and all those things that are
advertised, is aimed at them, that is not particularly
good for them really. Cheese strings and those things
that they think are marvellous and really they're not.
They'll have seen an advert on TV and thought that it
looked good and can we give it a try. And, you know,
sometimes I would try it but very often not really.'
Prohibitions….
 She never bought me Dairylea dunkers. I’ve asked
her and asked her when I was a kid and all she said
was no’
 I’d always prefer like a chocolate biscuit but I will not
be allowed. Or coke and crisps.
 I asked for chocolate spread and she didn’t get it.
Junk food = children’s food
 Junk food is not “ proper ” food
 Dairylea Dunkers, cheese strings. They’re always asking for
those. I never every buy them. I don’t know why they bother
asking really.
 Junk food as new social problem
 Children’s childhoods as new social problem
 Parenting under surveillance
Food, power & generational relations
 Because when I go to the shop I always like take stuff. Take it all
put it in the trolley she picks it out pulls it out of the trolley. It’s
quite a nightmare to go with her... [what sort of things do you like
to put in the trolley?] Biscuits, junk foods… She just puts healthy
food back in. It’s like get the healthy food out and the junk food
in.
 'I'm not allowed to buy what I really -- I'm not allowed to buy
loads of junk food, my dad doesn't let me, like loads of chocolate,
I'm not allowed to buy chocolate, loads -- and sweets. Like
maybe one, like, you know, packet
Children’s food = junk food
 If my friends come we have a lot more junk food.
My Mum makes like chips and burgers and I’m not
really into that. But most of my friends, a lot of my
friends are. When Paul comes…..For lunch he
has a ham sandwich just plain with no butter
'cause he dun’t like butter. And then for dinner he
has chicken nuggets and chips every day. ..….My
Mum usually makes some chips and burger and
things but he doesn’t like normal burgers. He has
to get these special prime beef ones or someat.
Family childhoods & junk food
 you get a bit slack, don’t you, and start doing
things to cut corners and treats to keep ‘em quiet
and so the rest of them have had more junk than
the oldest I suppose.
Different families, different childhoods
 'his mum would give it to 'em and say okay, you can have that'....
'His brother wanted pasta and he wanted pizza and I went with
whatever she was making'.
 'it's really weird cause he has power over everything in his, at
home. If his mum will go, his mum’s like so giving in to
everything, his mum will go "Oh, shall we have like chocolate ice
cream for dessert". He'll say, Lenny’ll say, "No, I really want the
caramel thing" . His mum’ll go "Oh, you can have caramel, you
can have chocolate" and it's really like kind of cushioning ….in
like foam'.
Different families, different childhoods
 'I tend to do more children friendly food when somebody's
coming over. But the rest of the time we tend to eat more sort
of adult type meals
but if there's a friend coming over
then I will try and make it a bit more child friendly…..kind of
like sausages and, you know, maybe pizza or something’

'most of the time he would pick the sort of healthy option… [but]
given the choice, every now and then, I think he'd have the junkie
option’

one of the reasons why I would rather that he had packed lunch
really. Cause I think given a free choice he might just choose the
not so healthier options'…
Surveillance & control
 Maintaining adult-child distinctions:

when my mum and dad do shopping and they come back and they
say “Those are mine. I bought them for me”. Then I wouldn’t touch
them. I’d ask before if I wanted to have one’ (girl)

We do have this top cupboard which has got like nice sweet things
in. Maybe some crisps and chocolate but they may be for special
occasions. But like it’s not only for the grown ups, but only the
grown ups can go and eat. Like get, bring it down, or we’d have to
ask permission. (girl)
Circumventing control….

And she doesn’t get us the nice biscuits. She gets the mud biscuits as
we call them - the biscuits that don’t taste very nice, so we don’t eat
them (boy)

my favourite chocolate’s “Bournville” and she’d got a big bar of it in the
fridge which is really annoying so every now and then I can, like, I’ll say:
“ I’ve just had a piece of fruit or yoghurt, please can I have a bit of
chocolate.”
Child(ish) families? Junk families?
 We like pizza, I mean, we like what you call
junk foods, we like burgers , we like hot
dogs, we like pizzas.
Other families = improper food=improper
families -Sheila’s story
 we were sat next to a table of two adults and three children who
let’s say were not small…they weren’t obese but they weren’t
small’ .
 me and Tim enjoyed the salad just as much as the pizza. We
only had two pieces of pizza each and filled the plate up 'cause
there’s loads of different really nice looking fresh salads.
 all five of ‘em did it and they went up again and filled their plates
up 'cause their dad had told ‘em it was a buffet… Yeah, he says,
“I’ve paid
a lot for this. So get up there and..”
My family= proper family = proper food =
Sheila’s story contd.
I know for a fact that they would, mine would have chosen the salad
they wouldn’t just, I couldn’t think of anything more disgusting
than sitting having to eat plate fulls of pizza. But that was
obviously a message from their parents.

I know if they go out tomorrow for their dinner [ ] I know if there
was a choice between Burger King, McDonald’s or a subway
they’ll go to the subway sandwich shop. I know they would.
They, they don’t, it would be torture for them to go and eat
McDonalds and things like that.’
Proper families display families properly - Shelia’s
story concludes
'at the end of the day you're in control, you are the
parent, you've got the purse. You make the decisions
and if kids pester you for a chocolate bar, just say no.
The three and four-year-olds are getting their own way
about what they want to eat and you're letting them down
by letting them. Just say no and tell them why. And if
they pester that much say, "Well, no you can't have a
chocolate bar but go and choose a piece of fruit that
you'd like." There's always a way round it but I think
some of them are so hassled they just give in for
quietness and they're not doing them any favours at all.
And it's a load of crap that the kids get what they want to
eat cause they've pestered for it.'
Conclusion
 Junk food- junk childhood….a cultural paradox?
 Technological changes map out child-adult
distinctions via developments in “children’s food”
 Children’s food symbolic of children’s
separateness
 Childhood obesity an unintended consequence of
of such conceptual distinctions?