Content area
Full text
Fun foods
Edited by Simona De Julio
Consuming fun food in childhood is not a recent development in Europe. Indeed, historians have shown how such food has long figured among the foods children eat. In France, the tradition of having a special tart combining play and food on Twelfth Night, gave pride of place to the child even in the days of the Ancien Régime ([1] Ariès, 1973). If eating such foods was accepted at that time, it was however well circumscribed. It was most often associated with a celebration; today, by contrast, it has become an everyday occurrence: "Products which used to be eaten only during festivities are now part of everyday consumption" ([8] De Iulio and Diasio, 2007, p. 163). Modernity has brought these products into daily life through communication and marketing campaigns which have established the idea of "every day is a celebration day" and of the importance of the extraordinary in everyday life. An example of this trend is Kinders products, which have promoted the spread of the tradition of eating chocolate eggs from Easter Sunday to the rest of the year ([8] De Iulio and Diasio, 2007). The generalization of the extraordinary, which is aimed at attracting the young consumer, involves research into, and the development of, ever more innovative fun dimensions for certain ranges of products. These products, either through their affordance or through the messages accompanying them, give clear indications on the type of game the child should have with the food when he comes to eat it. Our paper will develop this aspect, following a brief review of the literature on representations of the child in our modern societies. We will then seek to show how children's eating practice is not necessarily organized around the manufacturer's suggested uses, but rather around deviations from and the re-appropriation of these. Our work is based on the results of an ethnographical survey which we carried out among fifteen families in Eastern France with children aged between six and twelve. Drawing on the observations we made during mealtimes (these include formal and informal meals, such as snacking and nibbling) and the interviews we conducted with the children and their parents on the play relationship they have with food, we will then...