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Objectif Nutrition N°57 (May 2001)
Recent changes in eating habits
Jean-Pierre POULAIN

Social changes have the effect, among other things, of changing eating patterns: simplification of meals, an increase in eating outside of meals, eating lunch in the office. May these changes be implicated in certain qualitative imbalances in diet observed at present?

The general public is alarmed over it, and the media has echoed it:
the French eating habits are undergoing profound changes. Such changes are experienced by the general public and sometimes even by health care professionals as a deterioration in the traditional diet and a transgression of standards and social values. Everything happens as if the regulation of eating patterns was upset by changes in the organization of social life: working of women, the practice of a continuous workday, urbanization, the new distribution of household tasks between men and women, industrialization of the food industry or the decrease in the share of the food budget allocated by households at the benefit of leisure activities.

PREVIOUS STUDIES

Up until the recent past, the "modern diet" divided sociologists. For some, following a trend already implemented in the North American society, the French eating patterns were breaking down: the dividing of meals, and the increase in snacking and the decreased sanctity of meals. For others, the breakdown in French eating patterns was related to the rumor orchestrated by certain industrial lobbying groups who sought to legitimize the marketing of "appetite- suppressant" or "snacking products". Surveys available, which are too few in number were often contradictory and did not enable comparisons. Indeed, some of them involved stated data sometimes collected by self-administered questionnaires; others had been conducted in the context of preparatory studies on restricted, non-representative samples; and still others were conducted by marketing agencies which for confidential purposes did not provide precise details on their methodology.

In 1980, Igor de Garine indicated the need for a commitment to the collection of empirical data. "The essential part of our knowledge on the French contemporary diet has been acquired through many questionnaires whose presentation may suggest that it involves direct observations, and materially objective facts. This is not at all true; this type of approach cannot replace an objective and quantified analysis of production and of food consumption which alone is able to determine the facts but at the price of minute detail." Claude Fischler, commenting on U.S. studies emphasized one of the main difficulties in collecting data in the dietary field. The number of food contacts in a one day period amounted to about twenty: and yet the majority of persons who filled out questionnaires nevertheless stated that they ate three meals a day. And thus modern eaters continue to believe that they are having three meals a day, a little bit like persons who have undergone a limb amputation continue to feel their lost arm or leg for a long time, like a phantom limb. In reply to the question: "How many times did you eat yesterday?", the spontaneous reply restores internalized social standards. Certainly such a question and its reply are not without interest but the data obtained should not be considered as objective behavioral variables. Thus it is necessary to differentiate between real practices objectified either directly by observation or by mediatization through economic variables from "reported practices" by interviewed people which can be the subject of transformation, semantic restructuring and omission or even denial.

TWO RECENT STUDIES

Two studies measure such changes in eating patterns. They have been conducted in the workplace and with the same methodology, two years apart on comparable samples of over a thousand persons who come from the working population: direct observation of mealtime trays eaten in the restaurant of the company in which the subject works and reconstitution of the previous day eating pattern based on a questionnaire. Although the context of this research was the company restaurant, a certain number of results may widely be applied out of the specific context of company restaurants.

SIMPLIFICATION OF THE NOON TIME MEAL

In France, the "social standard of the complete meal" is a unit comprised of four categories: an appetizer, main course, cheese and dessert. A simplified version of a meal without cheese is recognized. >From an individual standpoint, the "standard" can be identified through the definition of a " true meal": over 62% of persons questioned stated that they adhere to the structured standard of the full meal. However in practice the traditional full meal accounts for only 53% of noon time meals and less than 40% of evening meals confirming a process of simplification. Comparison of data collected in 1995 with those of 1997 confirmed this trend to simplification of meals. (Table 1).

Structure of meal time tray-meals eaten in the company restaurant in 1995 and 1997

  1995 1997 Change in
Structure of trays % sample % sample %
Appetizer, main course, cheese, dessert 10,1 7,7 -2,4
Appetizer, main course, dessert 40,8 38,0 -2,8
Sub-total complete meals 50,9 45,7 -5,2
Main course, dessert 36,1 38,9 +2,8
Appetizer, main course 5,2 5,2 0
Appetizer, dessert 5,9 7,0 +1,1
Other combinations 1,9 3,2 +1,3
Sub- total simplifiedmeals 49,1 54,3 +5,2
Total 100 100  

Table 1

Simplification of noon time meals is a phenomenon which affects the population of Paris and large provincial cities. It involves especially women employees and tertiary sector managers who have an urban lifestyle. On the contrary neither age nor income level are correlated with this practice which intensifies as the duration of travel between home and the workplace increases.

INCREASE IN EATING OUTSIDE OF MEALS

The "food contact outside of meals" is defined as the ingestion of solid or liquid products with an energy ration. Eating a cake, fruit, fruit juice or sweetened coffee is counted as a food contact outside a meal. Ingesting coffee or unsweetened tea and of course water is not. Also excluded from these surveys are the use of chewing gum and eating of candy.

These food contacts outside of meals can be more or less institutionalized, that is marked by a certain social status and subject to rules: cocktails, snacks, lunch boxes, etc. (NdT difficile de transposer des habitudes différentes) They can also be non-institutionalized and related to what every one designates in the absence of a more precise term as snacking.
An increase in daily food contacts (meals plus food contacts outside of meals) from 4.7 to 5.3 has been observed between 1995 and 1997. A distribution into three groups makes it possible to analyze this change (Table 2).Except for the travel distance from home to work place the profile of the populations involved by the increase and the number of food contacts is the same as that of subjects who simplify the meal structure.

Daily number of food contacts comparison 1995-1997

  % persons questioned Change between 1995 et 1997
  1995 1997  
3 contacts(3 conventional meals) 22,9 18,9 - 4,0
4 or 5 contacts(three meals and 1 or 2 food contacts outside of meals) 53,5 40,9 -12,6
6 contacts or more (up to 15)
(3 meals and three food contacts outside of meals and over)		 23,6 40,2 +16,6
  100 100  

Table 2

EATING IN THE WORKPLACE

The third characteristic in the recent change of eating patterns is the introduction of food in the work place: this does not involve the company restaurant but rather the office itself. This trend also involves the noon time meal as well as food contacts outside of meals (Table 3). Meals eaten in the office are developing more intensively in the tertiary sector. These general data may under-evaluate the process because in the analysis of daily patterns prior to the survey, over 15 % of the population had eaten the noon time meal the day before in the office.

Products that comprise meals are brought from home or are purchased in the vicinity of the workplace and this occurs even though the individuals have the company restaurant at their disposal. This is a little bit like a "return of the lunch pail."

Contrary to what may be thought, the reasons for these new practices which above all involve women (managers and employees) are not cost related (1.71%), nor even related to the possible displeasure for the company restaurant (3.77%). The primary reason given falls within a work time logic "we can save time" or "we can extend a meeting or a working session," and in this way we avoid "having to line up" and "time lost going from one place to another." Thus it is a way of regulating the daily workload. Indeed the work day for a woman with children is dictated by two time requirements: the time of arrival and time of departure to bring her children to school or to the nanny and to pick them up. Changes in the workload thus are regulated by the time allocated for meals.
For men, the duration of a meal is more constant with their manner of regulating the workload consisting of changing the times of arrival and especially the times of departure.

Food contacts outside of meals, according to 55% of them, are taken in the work site. This involves drinks (coffee, tea, fruit juices, etc), cookies and fruit. These food contacts which are highly socialized, fall within the logic of informal regulation of occupational relations. For working populations this method of eating outside of meals contrasts with the image of the compulsive "snacker."

Locations of food contacts (meals and outside of meals) (1997)

Types of contacts meals(%) Food contactsoutside of meals(%)
Location    
Home 66.4 29.5
Office 5.7 5.6
Company restaurant 20.6 1.4
Other restaurant 5.2 5.9
Travel 0.5 2.9
Non-reply 1.6 3.8
Total 100 100

Table 3

CONCLUSION

The simplification of meals by French people is often characterized by the elimination of appetizers or desserts, with meals being limited to a main course. Thus this results in a reduction of intake of fresh vegetables and fruits, at the benefit of food contacts taken outside of meals (chocolate or cereal bars, candies and pastries). Considering the qualitative consequences of these changes in food contacts from a nutritional standpoint, some nutritionists or media which relay the information, are tempted to condemn the new eating patterns." The debate on the need to restore good eating habits (three structured meals a day) and no food contact between meals and to re-educate the modern consumer is the consequence of such changes. Is the cause of potential qualitative imbalances in the modern French diet due to the division of food contacts or in the nature of the foods eaten ?

Jean-Pierre POULAIN
Socio-anthropologist
University of Toulouse Le Mirail, France


Bibliography

Aymard M., Grignon C. et Sabban F. Le temps de manger : alimentation, emploi du temps et rythmes sociaux,
Editions MSH-INRA.1993

Corbeau J.-P. Rituels alimentaires et mutations sociales, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie ,
1992 vol. XCII : 101-120.

Fischler C. L'Homnivore,
Odile Jacob.1990.

Garine (de) I. Pour une anthropologie de l'alimentation des Français,
Ethnologie française, 1980 ;3, X.

Poulain J.-P. La modernité alimentaire, pathologie ou mutations sociales ?,
Cahiers de nutrition et de diététique, 1998 ; 33,6 : 351-358.

Poulain J.-P., Gineste M., Delorme J.-M.
Le comportement alimentaire hors foyer et hors repas, quelle réalité ? Perspectives d'avenir ,
Revue de nutrition pratique, 2000 ;13 :12-17.
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