Machines for the Suppression of Time: Meaning and Explanations of Food Change Available to Purchase

Concerned with the kinds of explanation which might be offered for changing food habits, proposes that large‐scale, multifactorial explanations are often inappropriate, and may be misleading when applied to the social explanation of food use. Argues that, for example, in the explanation of changes in children′s food habits, a social explanation should focus on changes in the relationships within the family, and changes in the significance of age and gender within these relationships. Food uses symbolize the investment and division of time and the importance which society places on members′ control and use of it. Values, in this case related to the ways in which foods are used,have changed as a consequence of increases in the power and importance of women′s and children′s timetables, and a falling‐off in the significance of the masculine “wage‐earner” role.