Possible versus desired diets: food legislation as additional stress for low-income mothers

Sifting through preschool teachers' funds of knowledge to reveal culturally sustaining child-feeding professional learning opportunities at one university in Singapore

“…Such pedagogies emphasize individual responsibility and may oversimplify the complexities of food culture, paying little attention to the social systems that shape food choices and taste (Poppendieck, 2011). What is more, caregivers reporting lower incomes experience significant stress when they are unable to comply with biopedagogical child-feeding legislation due to their lived realities (e.g., exhaustion from hard work, desire to maintain harmony among mealtime stakeholders, and limited budget for food) (Donskoy & Cardoso, 2023). The overabundance of medical suggestions, dietary advice and nutritional warnings can also displace traditional social norms around food, confusing diners, and leaving them with "vagabond" (i.e., unstructured and erratic) feeding habits or practices (Poulain, 2002).…”

“…Across Japanese (Allison, 1991), British (Morrison, 1996), and Indian contexts (Donner, 2006), teachers viewed mothers who packed proper lunchboxes for their young children-filled with food that was perceived to be nutritious-as demonstrating their middle-class status through their gastronomic knowledge. Certainly, studies conducted across nations and time periods indicate that feeding practices are closely tied to sound middle-class mothering (Donskoy & Cardoso, 2023;Harman & Cappellini, 2015). Mothers who do not adhere to societal feeding ideals may be stigmatized as "McDonald's Mums" (Hazır, 2024).…”