ISSN: 2474-8846
Authors: Krönner PT*
The debate on food security predominantly focuses on availability of and access to food as agricultural products like wheat, rice, maize etc. However, human beings usually do not eat raw agricultural products, but prepared dishes. This is why it is pivotal to take account of the whole process of transforming food to meals. Food security debates that concentrate on agricultural products only, remain too narrow. Human nutrition is a complex socio-cultural phenomenon. All living species need food for survival, but human beings are governed by cultural norms and taboos regulating this process of incorporation of natural products. I have introduced the concept of meal culture in my research because I felt a strong need for a new view – a new paradigm that reflects the social, cultural, and environmental embeddedness of our gender relations in the nutritional and agricultural sciences.
Thus, the meal culture approach can be seen as a challenge to the classical discussion on food security and safety, or even food sovereignty. It can be seen as a query, even to critical agro-food studies, as the concept of “meal†has not been given the needed merit by having been included as a focal point of investigation and research, yet. The concept of meal culture offers a way to build new transdisciplinary connections within the scientific debates on food and nutrition. It is part of a broader concept of humans interacting with the natural and cultural environments. In this contribution, a human and cultural ecological approach to meal culture will be introduced. As meals shape our social relations and communication systems, including gender relations, they should be part of scientific reflections about our daily diet. It is not only a matter of what people eats, but also how they organize the whole process of preparing and sharing. Meals can bring people together and strengthen human interactions. Meals are constitutive in community building and are, thus, especially important in food insecure regions where social ties significantly determine whether someone is food insecure or not. Moreover, environmental conditions and the availability of water and energy, for example, need to be taken into consideration. The infrastructure including the necessary knowledge and technology for cooking, and not to forget the needed time beside social and cultural criteria of choice as well as the division of labor has to be considered in order to prepare and share a meal. Still meal preparation in most of the food studies and discussions remain in the dark, as long as these activities are taken place at home as part of care economy. With a new methodological systematization of research areas based on a human and cultural ecological funnel an inclusive meal culture concept will be introduced. Environmental aspects as well as socio economic and technological dimensions will be considered. The undervalued tasks of female contribution to household economy give space to integrate crucial questions of human nutrition and livelihood. The rediscovery of AIV in the last two and a half decades allows for reflecting historical development in East Africa with regard to changes in food habits. During colonial times African leafy vegetables were referred to as weeds or poor people’s food. Based on a broad literature revue and in-debth interviews with Kenyan experts and empirical studies the reconstruction of AIV in meal culture in Kenya is presented. Traces of development are followed from poor people’s crop to a commercialized enterprise present in supermarkets of bigger cities. The results so far can show an ambivalent situation with regard to the increased popularity and consumption of local vegetables. One aspect is the increase of prices for AIV in the market, no longer poor people’s crop. The other point has to reflect changes in gender relation and the consequences with regard to food and meal security on family as well as on local and national level. In Kenya and in many other African countries production, marketing preparation of AIV was and partly still is one of the last domains of women’s economic autonomy. Female farmers were mastering this field of subsistence economy and income generating activity which has given them self reliance and sovereignty. Female farmers as well are the ones in processing and preparing of meals guaranteeing nutrition health and security. But in the meantime men become more interested in taking over the AIV production and marketing with connection to supermarkets and whole sale as the prices rise and cultivating AIV and dealing with these crops become a money making source. Now if by these new processes of promoting AIV female farmers will lose the control in this field of autonomous activity, discussions around women’s empowerment becomes a farce. Careful evaluation is needed before it becomes too late. If nutrition security is the aim, research activities cannot become successful without studying gender relations in meal policy and meal culture. Agricultural sciences will gain by becoming more open to a meal culture approach and gender dimension of meal security.
Keywords:
Meal Sovereignty; food Security; Meal Politics; Exotic Vegetables; Spider Plant; Meal Sovereignty
