Review

Eating, out in the open

FOOD, HEALTH AND IDENTITY
Pat Caplan (ed)
Routledge, 1997, £15.99

This is a fascinating collection of essays and empirical research covering a vast range of topics; food, after all, is central to human existence in a way nothing else is, and its social, cultural and moral dimensions influence our eating beliefs and practices on a daily basis.

The title of the book is perhaps a little misleading, and although I feel sure no reader could fail to be intrigued by much of its content, healthmatters readers looking for material which might be relevant to their work may feel that chapters on subjects such as the history of wedding cakes or the ethics of meat eating fall outside even the most generously inclusive interpretation of health.

A particularly welcome emphasis in the collection, nicely articulated by Caplan in her comprehensive chapter of introduction, is the attention given to ethnicity in relation to food and eating in a way that recognises both the ‘creolisation’ of the ‘British’ diet, and ‘interrogates the dominant majority’, which so often goes unmarked in relation to identity categories.

Several contributors make useful critiques of the extent to which we define ourselves and others in relation to food choices, providing insights which could valuably inform the work of those constructing policies to persuade us all to healthy eating.

As one piece of research concludes, much of the health promotion literature on this is found to be ‘very hard to swallow’ by the public. The evidence for the rationality of choices based on ‘lay’ knowledge from the epidemiological data available to the general public is clearly demonstrated in several of the chapters, and the media’s role in this is also usefully analysed.

A couple of central perspectives are missing from this collection and, while it may seem fastidious to complain about these, I think the expressed remit of the book demands that attention be given to the specifically gendered role that women have in relation to food, health and identity. There is no mention, either, of food production and growing, so that identity and health seem to be conceived solely in terms of consumption.

That said, the book as a whole provides one of the most enjoyable exercises of sociological self-indulgence: the chapters on what people say about eating on holidays and about the meaning of eating out, in particular, offer the reader all the pleasure of being a fly-on-the-wall of others’ lives – and thus the opportunity to think more critically about our own eating practices and beliefs.