‘Nutrition’ and ’eating’ are seemingly related concepts. However, there is an important
difference between them. ‘Nutrition’ is more biological and expresses the body’s need
for nourishment to survive. ‘Eating’, on the other hand, is an occasion for nourishment:
a performance. The dichotomy that hunger and nutrition are biological needs, and that
the way to satisfy this need is culturally determined, arises every time nutrition
and eating are discussed. Ingesting food in the here and now is a communicative activity,
a custom, a function and specific code of a culture. When the legal background and
dietetic recommendations for school meals are being created, little attention is paid
to the conditions and ways children consume food with a scientifically determined nutritional
composition. Therefore, we as ethnographers investigated with our own methods, among
other things, the physical environment, logistics, and customs of catering and eating
in school canteens. In this entire process, the allotted time as well as the communication
about food and attitude towards food of the stakeholders – food service managers,
cooks, suppliers, service staff, teachers accompanying children, children and their
parents – are also important factors. Focusing on the communal mealtime rituals observed
at the fieldwork sites, especially saying grace, the study explores how and in what
versions all of these are implemented in the school canteen, and what effect they have
on the attitude of the participants towards (canteen) food.
