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Alan Warde: Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Ambivalence about convenience food
One of the major conceptual oppositions used to recommend food in the later twentieth century has been between convenience and care (Warde, 1997). The antinomy particularly impacts upon women insofar as conventions of family organisation prescribe that food preparation is a woman's responsibility and that indeed, as DeVault (1991) convincingly demonstrates, the symbolic representation of the family, and its practical reproduction over time, is sentimentally achieved through the act of care involved in feeding a family. That continues to be associated with the addition of a housewife's labour in the preparation of meals. It is the compassionate commingling of domestic labour with foodstuffs that sanctifies meal preparation in its symbolic family-sustaining role. Hence, the category "users of convenience food" is a way of identifying reprobates, people who are somehow failing in their duties. Buying fish and chips was considered unacceptable when it was mainly a habit of the working class; serving up the contents of tins or cook-chilled dishes is something for which housewives have been encouraged to feel ashamed. The idea of convenience food is tinged with moral disapprobation.
The concept has many connotations which are currently highly contested. Different groups and organized interests have contrasting orientation towards manufactured foods. On the one hand there are manufacturers and retailers trying to legitimise its use. They are surely part way to success if we judge by the fact that the items conventionally called convenience foods are being sold in increasing volume. On the other hand there are expressions of qualms about the decline of housewifely care and skill, the equation of real and healthy food with fresh food, gourmandising objections to mass produced tastes and so forth. Gofton (1995a, and summarised briefly 1995b), in an extended consideration of convenience food, maintains that the balance between promoters and critics has shifted decisively in favour of the former, claiming that convenience foods are now perfectly acceptable. He argues that this is partly a result of women's resistance to being held largely responsible for domestic food preparation even when in paid employment and partly a consequence of a decline in the cultural importance of regular household meals in postmodern times. Thus, he says:"A move towards...