Nordic Children's Foodscapes

Who Cares? The Importance of Emotional Connections with Nature to Ensure Food Security and Wellbeing in Cities

“…In addition to providing sustenance, food is also a symbol of personal and group identity, thereby playing an essential role within most cultures [68]. Vaqué-Crusellas et al [69] state that food "includes aspects of the physical environment (where the eating takes place, the furniture, the cutlery used, sound and environmental temperature, among others), the psychosocial environment (interpersonal relationships with meal companions) and also beliefs and values held with regard to food in each socio-cultural context" (p. 964) (similar points are made by Johansson [70] and Jacobsen [16]). Cantarero et al found that people prefer to consume food that they associate symbolically with their own culture, as it reinforces their sense of belonging [71].…”

“…Gradually education programs are incorporating the understanding that good eating practices require more than learning about healthy food, but are about building a positive relationship with food [70]. There is an opportunity to merge nature and food focused programs to reinforce this connection.…”

“…And Sloan et al [74] found that children eat healthier foods when nutritional education is combined with environmental support (schools, parents and local communities). It can be argued that young people have limited control over their foodscape and are therefore are strongly influenced by the foodscape in which they spend the majority of their time i.e., at home and the wider community (including their school) [32,70,133].…”

“…Research shows that adolescents are well-informed about good health and nutrition practices, but that adolescents do not translate this knowledge into good food behaviour [70,74,113]. O'Dea [132] clearly found that "adolescents are looking to their parents and teachers to encourage, support, and enable them to be involved in more healthful behaviours" (p. 500), to the extent where several student groups held their parents completely responsible for meal preparation and blaming them for their poor eating habits [56,84,113].…”

“…Food often plays an important role in facilitating such categorization of "belonging" and "non-belonging", often through discussions about heritage, nation building and tradition [68,73]. Eating and food are strongly embedded in history, identity, community, place and culture, so will always involve interactions between the social and natural world [32,70]. Research is limited however, on how a seemingly stable part of one's cultural identity can also be fluid and changeable, given that diets and cuisines are in constant state of flux (which is significantly amplified by globalisation) [68].…”