“The nation’s diet”: an overview of early results Available to Purchase

“The nation’s diet” is a six‐year basic social science programme funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, consisting of 16 projects located in universities across England, Scotland and Wales. Explains the overall purpose of this multi‐disciplinary programme in social scientific terms as the examination of the processes affecting human food choice. The programme’s central concern ‐ “why do people eat what they do?” ‐ is amenable to study using a variety of social scientific research approaches, designs and techniques of data collection and analysis. Illustrates this methodological variety selectively in reporting a few of the programme’s early results from three of its projects. The findings confirm that people eat what they do for a multiplicity of reasons in addition to, and sometimes in conflict with, hunger, properties of the food itself or people’s own valuation of health and nutrition.