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Chapter 4. Gluttony: No taste without the waste? Gluttony in bakery product retailing.
... Syötäväksi kelpaavaa ruokaa heitetään pois Suomessa vuosittain noin 23-28 kiloa henkilöä kohden (Katajajuuri ym., 2014;Silvennoinen ym., 2022). Kotitalouksien kulutustottumukset eivät ole irrallaan ruokahävikin synnystä elintarvikeketjun aiemmissa vaiheissa (Alhonnoro & Norrgrann, 2018). Siksi yksilöiden ja kotitalouksien ruoankulutus on keskeistä ruokahävikin vähentämisen näkökulmasta. ...
... Ruokahävikin syntyyn vaikuttavat monet yksilöä ja perhettä laajemmat yhteiskunnalliset ja kulttuuriset seikat (esim. Alhonnoro & Norrgrann, 2018;Evans, 2014). Yksilöt kuitenkin ottavat vastuuta hävikistä ja pohtivat sen vähentämisen merkitystä osana ruokakasvatusta. ...
Ruokahävikki on monimuotoinen ekologinen, sosiaalinen ja eettinen kysymys. Se ei ole kuitenkaan juuri noussut esiin diakonian tutkimuksen kentällä. Erityisen vähän on kiinnitetty huomiota kotitalouksien näkökulmaan, vaikka ruokahävikkiä syntyy kaikkein eniten kotitalouksissa ja vaikka perheet ovat keskeinen diakonisen työn konteksti. Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastelemme kotitalouksien ruokahävikkiä osana sukupolvien välistä kanssakäymistä. Tutkimuksen aineisto koostuu yksilö- ja ryhmähaastatteluista yhteensä 42 ihmisen kanssa Suomessa ja Kanadassa. Tulosten perusteella ruokahävikkiin liittyvistä kysymyksistä neuvotellaan osana ruokakasvatusta tavalla, johon liittyy kaksi keskenään jännitteistä ihannetta. Näistä ensimmäinen, ruoan poisheittämisen välttäminen, kiteytyy erityisesti kehotukseen syödä lautanen tyhjäksi. Toinen ihanne puolestaan liittyy tasapainoisen ruoankulutuksen tavoitteluun ja edellyttää välttämään vaatimusta syödä lautanen tyhjäksi. Jännitteet näiden kahden ihanteen välillä heijastavat muutosta ruokaan liittyvissä kasvatusihanteissa sukupolvien välillä. Ihanteiden lisäksi ruokahävikkiin liittyy tulosten perusteella myös käytäntöjä, jotka synnyttävät sukupolvien välistä kitkaa. Ihmiset eivät useinkaan haasta hävikkiin liittyviä ihanteita ja käytäntöjä avoimesti, vaan vaivihkaisesti. Ruokahävikkiin liittyvä navigointi ja neuvottelu eivät pura vallitsevia ihanteita, mutta osoittavat sekä niiden vahvuuden, että ristiriitaisuuden. Ruokahävikin tuottaminen on paitsi ongelma, myös vastarinnan ja luovan toiminnan muoto ja jopa lempeän kasvatuksen ehto. Tämän monimutkaisuuden ymmärtäminen on välttämätöntä kotitalouksien tukemiseksi kohti entistä kestävämpää ja luomakunnan rajat huomioivaa ruoankulutusta. Abstract Food waste is a complex ecological, social, and ethical issue. However, it has not been much discussed in the field of diaconal research. Particularly little attention has been paid to the household perspective, despite the fact that households are the most affected by food waste and that families are a key context for diaconal work. In this study, we look at household food waste in the context of intergenerational interactions. The data for this study consists of individual and group interviews with a total of 42 people in Finland and Canada. The results suggest that food waste issues are negotiated as part of food education in a way that involves two conflicting ideals. The first of these, avoiding throwing food waste, is crystallized in particular in the invitation to finish one's plate. The second ideal is linked to the pursuit of balanced food consumption and involves avoiding the requirement to finish one's plate. The tensions between these two ideals reflect changing educational ideals about food between generations. In addition to ideals, the results also suggest that food waste is associated with practices that create intergenerational friction. People often do not challenge food waste ideals and practices openly, but rather subtly. Navigating and negotiating food waste does not dismantle prevailing ideals but shows both their strength and their contradictions. The production of food waste is not only a problem, but also a form of resistance and creative action, and even a condition of gentle education. Understanding this complexity is essential to supporting households towards more sustainable food consumption.
... Food waste has consistently been studied through the methodological lens of Actor Network Theory, as scholars analyse all actors within the food waste network and argue for the importance of relationality and distributed agency (Alhonnoro & Norrgrann, 2018;Beacham, 2018;Turner 2018;Turner, 2019;Jarosz, 2000). ...
Food waste is a challenge to the sustainability of global food systems and to the environment and demonstrates a dire need for solutions in which the food produced for human consumption actually feeds people. Food rescue practices respond to this challenge through the redistribution of food waste materials, working towards a circular economic system. Through analysis of two food rescue organisations, this article maps the food waste network and the actors engaged in practices of transforming discarded food waste materials back into an edible food resource. Despite their best intentions to uphold the fundamental goal of saving food, 'food heroes' face logistical, financial, and ethical hurdles as they implement their food rescue practices. Operating within the globalised food system, which prioritises profit and productivity, is a major challenge to food rescue organisations. This article demonstrates the fragile intricacies of the food waste network and compares how food rescue operates within different levels of the food supply chain.
... Studies have found that when justifying meat consumption, people tend to refer to four basic argumentative traits: Biology, health, culture, and taste (Joy 2010;Piazza et al. 2015). In addition, the social environment of consumption-from education instruments to layouts in grocery stores-influence consumer behaviour (Alhonnoro and Nuorgam 2018;Apostolidis and McLeay 2016). Furthermore, local, national and global food cultures impact on the types and amounts of meat consumption. ...
Despite the growing popularity of vegetarian foods and diets, the vast majority of people in North America and other parts of the affluent world still eat meat. This article explores what ordinary people think about eating animals and how they navigate the ethical questions inherent in that praxis. Drawing from interviews with 24 people living in Ottawa, Canada, the study shows how the concepts of dominion, stewardship and reconciliation manifest in the everyday lives of ordinary people as models for human relations with nonhuman others and the environment. These ideas resonate in the lives of ordinary people, both religious and nonreligious, and entwine as people try to make sense of how to live with the fact that their everyday food consumption causes suffering and harm. This study shows that in the context of everyday life, dominion, stewardship and reconciliation are not alternative views, but connected to each other, and serve different purposes. The study highlights a need for analyses that constitute practical ways to renew the broken relationships within creation and which incorporate nonreligious people into the scope of analyses that focus on the relationships between humans and nonhuman creation.
... Bins and composts are central liminal agents that tie domestic food waste to wider infrastructures of waste management (Metcalfe et al. 2012) and sometimes to earthworms, mold, and dirt (Abrahamsson and Bertoni 2014). Furthermore, researchers have noted that issues as varied as temporality (Mattila et al. 2019), retail (Alhonnoro and Norrgrann 2018), valuation (Lehtonen and Pyyhtinen 2020), and care (Koskinen et al. 2018) play a significant role in how food becomes waste. ...
This article analyzes the role of the refrigerator in how food becomes waste in socio-material and ethico-cultural practices. The modern food refrigeration technologies and practices have extended food’s useability time. They have transformed ordinary life by allowing households to store ample amounts of fresh food. However, this study suggests that fridges merit more attention not only in terms of reducing food waste, but in efforts to understand how food waste comes into being. This article draws from an analysis of qualitative interviews with ordinary people in Canada and Finland to show that refrigerators are important agents in the moral narrative of food waste: They provide a concrete space where food becomes waste, a justification for food becoming waste, and a material reference point through which people can talk about wider cultural patterns, moral norms, and ordinary ethical dilemmas tied to food waste. Technical devices such as refrigerators do not alone create or solve the problem of food waste, but they are relevant to the ethics of wasting food. Focusing on the fridge helps to show how human and non-human material worlds are entangled and how an overflowing fridge can structure, illustrate, facilitate, and contribute to human ethical conduct related to food waste in a significant way.
The contemporary food system relies on a paradigm of human exceptionalism. But living well together with all forms of life would require that we imagine humans’ place in the world as embedded, not as separate. This study explores food waste as a case for how to reimagine humans’ place in the world. Drawing from individual and group interviews conducted in Canada and Finland, I trace the roles that ordinary people assign for themselves when talking about food waste. Humans see themselves as both creators of food waste and as saviours of food that is in danger of going to waste. These images uphold the division between humans and the nonhuman world. As a way of troubling these anthropocentric notions and re-embedding the human in the analysis in a way that transcends hierarchical subject positions, I identify a third role: that of the garburator. This role takes humans seriously as material, embodied, and eventually decomposing beings.
Alhonnoro, Leipämaa-Leskinen, and Syrjälä analyse distributed agency in food waste, focusing on how non-human actors participate in production and/or reduction of food waste in retailing. Adopting the Actor-Network Theory, they follow how bread may—or may not—turn to waste. They zoom in on the interactions of three particular sets of non-human actors—bread and its package, natural-temporal actors, and techno-material actors—with other human and non-human actors in the food waste network. The chapter outlines practical implications and suggestions for food waste reduction by showing how food waste in retailing is not merely a human-led process that can be solved at the aggregate level, but a dispersed and complex issue needing analysis of the operational reality in the store environment.
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