Page 32 - Studio International - September 1974

summarizes the response to street
questionnaires. When it comes to abstracting
from the full report a set of rules, though
we are anxious not to reify what are in fact no
more than practical devices, we are conscious
of creating new conventions.
Between the week and the weekend different
kinds of meals are taken regularly at different
times of the day. Ignoring the names for the
meals, and concentrating only on what is served,
there are three kinds of meals: the major hot
meal, at roughly 6 pm on weekdays and early
afternoon at weekends; the minor meal usually
follows this, at 9 pm on weekdays and about
5 pm at weekends; a still less significant meal,
a tertiary food event consisting of a sweet biscuit
and a hot drink, is available in the system to be
used at different times, say at 4 pm on return
from the factory on weekdays, at bed-time at
weekends. Breakfast does not enter into the
system as a meal. If asked, our subjects said they
never had breakfast, just a cup of tea, just a
piece of toast, etc. But this research has so much
of food events through the day and through the order of sequence when more than one item eschewed the evidence of question and answer
week and through the year. He paid attention to appears. Thus fish and chips may sometimes that it has to rest upon observations and its own
the structuring of the food and to the structuring form part of a meal, and sometimes count as a definitions. Breakfast stands as a snack according
of the social occasion in which it was served. For snack. Snacks may be sweet or savoury, to our definition of the word. The three meal
this purpose he needed to define certain terms : separable from but capable of accompanying a system is broken by a major division between
food event, structured event, snack, meal. A drink. The meal by contrast has no self- potato and cereal. The important family meal
food event is an occasion when food is taken, contained food items and is strongly rule-bound is centred upon hot potatoes and their
without prejudice as to whether it constitutes a as to permitted combinations and sequences. accompaniments. This is more plentiful and
meal or not. A structured event is a social Together with the distinction between special more ceremonious than the other meals. The
occasion which is organized according to rules and common food events, these terms constitute minor meal starts with bread and may go on to
prescribing time, place and sequence of actions. the tools of the analysis whereby the structuring cake and biscuits accompanied by tea. The
It food is taken as part of a structured event, of social relations was found to be related to the tertiary meal consists of biscuits and tea
then we have a meal. The latter is distinguished structuring of the food. or coffee.
from the snack according to the following The structure of the meal system starts to
definition: a snack is an unstructured food event The structure of food emerge with criteria of ranking: A-is the main
in which one or more self-contained food items The food system that Michael Nicod discovered meal, B the second meal and C the third meal on
may be served. The event is unstructured in so poses problems of notation. His full report the criteria of complexity, copiousness and
far as there are no rules to prescribe which items describes the daily common menus and the ceremoniousness. The latter is expressed by
should appear together and there is no strict special menus of each of the families and plate-changes and extra utensils, spoons, forks

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