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Food socialization is the process of influences that forms children's eating habits and preferences, affecting their well-being for life. The authors' study explores what children and adolescents eat and how they obtain food at school, aiming to describe the deleterious food socialization phenomenon. The authors focused on understanding how deleterious food socialization influences children's food well-being within the school environment.

The authors developed a mixed methodology using structured questionnaires with open and closed questions. The authors also took pictures of the schools' canteens, which allowed deepening the understanding of the school environment. The data collection occurred in two Brazilian private schools. The schools' teachers were responsible for collecting 388 useful questionnaires from students between 10 and 14 years old.

The authors found statistically significant differences between food originating at home and school. The amount of ultra-processed foods and beverages consumed at home and taken by children and adolescents from home to school is smaller than what they buy in the school canteen or get from their colleagues. Thus, the authors suggest that the school environment tends to be more harmful to infant feeding than the domestic one.

This study coins the concept of deleterious food socialization: situations or environments in which the food socialization process negatively impacts one's well-being. The authors' results illustrate the deleterious food socialization phenomenon in the school environment.

This paper aims to explore the parental role in children’s food socialization. More specifically, it explores how the legacy of the past (i.e. experiences from the participant’s own childhood) works to inform how parents, in turn, socialize their own children within the context of food, drawing on theories of consumer socialization, intergenerational influence and emotional reflexivity.

To seek further understanding of how temporal elements of intergenerational influence persist (through the lens of emotional reflexivity), the authors collected qualitative and interpretative data from 30 parents from the UK using a combination of existential–phenomenological interviews, photo-elicitation techniques and accompanied grocery shopping trips (observational interviews).

Through intergenerational reflexivity, parents are found to make a conscious effort to either “sustain” or “disregard” particular food practices learnt from the previous generation with their children (abandoning or mimicking the behaviours of their own parents within the context of food socialization). Factors contributing to the disregarding of food behaviours (new influencer, self-learning and resistance to parental power) emerge. A continuum of parents is identified, ranging from the “traditionalist” to “improver” and the “revisionist”.

By adopting a unique approach in exploring the dynamic of intergenerational influence through the lens of emotional reflexivity, this study highlights the importance of the parental role in socializing children about food, and how intergenerational reflexivity helps inform parental food socialization practices. The intergenerational reflexivity of parents is, thus, deemed to be crucial in the socialization process.

This paper aims to develop a deeper understanding of what (un)sustainable food behaviours and values are transmitted across generations, to what extent this transference happens and the sustainability challenges resulting from this for individuals and households.

A total of 25 semi-structured in-depth interviews are analysed regarding the value of inherited food, family food rituals, habits and traditions, aspects of food production and understanding of sustainability.

Intergenerational transferences are significant in shaping (un)sustainable consumption throughout life, and those passed-on behaviours and values offer opportunities for lifelong sustainable change and food consumption reappraisal in daily life, beyond early years parenting and across diverse households.

Participants were limited to British families, although the sample drew on multiple ethnic heritages. Future research could study collectivist versus more individualistic cultural influence; explore intergenerational transference of other diverse households, such as multigeneration or in rural and urban locations, or whether sustainable crossover derived from familial socialisation continues into behaviours and values beyond food.

The findings show the importance of families and intergenerational transference to the embedding of sustainable consumption behaviours. Mundane family life is a critical source of sustainable learning, and marketers should prioritise understanding of the context and relationships that drive sustainable consumer choices. Opportunities for intentional and unintentional sustainable learning exist throughout life, and marketers and policymakers can both disrupt unsustainable and encourage sustainable behaviours with appropriate interventions, such as nostalgic or well-being communications. The paper sheds light on flexible sustainable identities and how ambivalence or accelerated lives can deflect how policy messages are received, preventing sustainable choices.

The findings provide greater understanding about the mechanisms responsible for the sustainable transformation of consumption habits, suggesting intergenerational transferences are significant in shaping (un)sustainable food consumption throughout life. The study shows secondary socialisation can play a critical role in the modification of early behaviour patterns of food socialisation. The authors found individuals replicate food behaviours and values from childhood, but through a process of lifelong learning, can break formative habits, particularly with reverse socialisation influences that prioritise sustainable behaviours.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship of dietary restriction and food well-being (FWB) in an under-researched population using a novel but growing approach to transition to healthier eating patterns.

This study uses individual interviews of African-American participants in a food detoxification program, a specific form of food restriction used to transition to healthier eating.

Results identify how food socialization and food literacy enable individuals to transform their relationship with food and enhance their FWB. Unlike prior research that focuses on food as the source of pleasure, this study finds that food is deployed as fuel, and this transition results in pleasure.

This research explains how a voluntary transition to healthier eating enables people to pursue FWB and extends the understanding of FWB (Block et al., 2011). In addition, this research contributes novel insights related to transformative consumer research efforts to motivate change. Findings have implications for marketing theory and practice, including the development of social marketing campaigns to support healthy eating patterns, especially for at-risk populations.

This study investigates the effects of sustainable design on food policy, literacy, and socialisation to gauge consumers' satisfaction with the general design of food well-being (FWB).

Using data from an online survey with 382 respondents, an empirical study applying composite-based structural equation modelling was conducted. Sustainable design for food socialisation was hypothesised to directly influence consumers' satisfaction with the general design of FWB, whereas food policy was assumed to have an emergent effect on food literacy. Gender was a control variable used to identify the heterogeneity of the effects.

The results demonstrated that sustainable design for food policy and food literacy positively influence food socialisation and affect consumers' satisfaction with the sustainable design for FWB. Additionally, women exhibited higher application of food knowledge and skills but less experience in FWB than men.

To the best of the authors knowledge, this study is the first to examine the emergent influence of food policy from a design perspective, with implications for industrial practitioners, policymakers, and academic research. This study also provides possible avenues for future sustainability and food product design research.

Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's ecological model, this research aims to investigate the interweaving of the socialization systems within which children learn eating practices, in order to open up new paths to build prevention and care programs against childhood obesity.

Children were interviewed using semi‐structured interviews, including projective methods. The data were analyzed by both a manual content analysis and the use of qualitative analysis software Nvivo. Nvivo enables to cross verbatim and contributes to highlight the joint effects of socialization agents in terms of children's eating learning.

The study clarifies the interrelationships between social contexts in which children learn food practices. It points out that the different social spheres may sometimes exert contradictory influences and that food learning cannot be limited to the transmission of nutritional information, but also involves emotional and social experiences.

By showing that eating habits stem from complex processes, the research suggests measures against children's obesity that take into account the interrelationships between social contexts. It invites the policymakers and the food companies to implement actions based on social relationships involved in food learning.

Whereas the traditional consumer socialization models focus on interactions between child and one socialization agent, this research's findings shed light on the entanglement of social spheres concerning eating socialization. They show that using a social‐ecological approach is useful to policymakers, researchers, marketers, and other constituencies involved in developing solutions to the obesity problem.

This paper aims to describe an ethnographic research study conducted within French families in order to examine the transfer of food learning between parents and children.

An ethnographic study in the respondents' home was conducted. Semi‐directive interviews with children and parents and observation were carried out in heterogeneous families.

Results indicate that food meal time is a way of socializing family members in consumption skills related to food. Food learning took place in two ways: from parents to children and from children to parents. Through different socialization factors, children will discover new food products or food practices and will be able to bring them to the home. By sharing these new experiences, children teach (directly or indirectly) parents new consumption skills related to the food domain. The food environment (e.g: familial atmosphere, interactions around the meal), more than the act of eating itself allows for a better understanding of food transmission within the family.

These findings would be of benefit to public policy as well as to investors and food manufacturers by integrating the reverse socialization aspect. Limits and research perspectives are discussed after the presentation of the results.

The paper investigates interactions between parents and children within their natural setting: their home.

This paper aims to investigate dynamics of food consumption practices among poor families in a developing country to advance the Food Well-being (FWB) in Poverty framework.

The research design used semi-structured interviews with 25 women and constructivist grounded theory to explore food consumption practices of poor families in rural South India.

Poor families’ everyday interactions with food reveal the relational production of masculinities and femininities and the power hegemony that fixes men and women into an unequal status quo. Findings provides critical insights into familial arrangements in absolute poverty that are detrimental to the task of achieving FWB.

The explanatory potential of FWB in Poverty framework is limited to a gender (women) and a specific country context (India). Future research can contextualise the framework in other developing countries and different consumer segments.

The FWB in Poverty framework helps identify, challenge and transform cultural norms, social structures and gendered stereotypes that perpetuate power hegemonies in poverty. Policymakers can encourage men and boys to participate in family food work, as well as recognise and remunerate women and girls for their contribution to maintaining familial units.

This paper makes an original contribution to the relevant literature by identifying and addressing the absence of theoretical understanding of families, food consumption and poverty. By contextualising the FWB framework in absolute poverty, the paper generates novel understandings of fluidity and change in poor families and FWB.

This paper examines the potential of photography as a design thinking method to develop innovative food experiences that improve food well-being.

This paper is a critical review of research using photography to examine the complex physical, emotional, psychological and social relationships individuals have with food at personal and societal levels.

The conceptual legitimacy of photography is well-established in the social sciences but has been missing from design thinking practices. Photography is particularly well suited to understand the highly visual practice of food and to design innovative food experiences.

Practical and ethical issues in the use of photography are considered as a research tool. Future research should examine photography as an integrated tool in the entire design thinking process.

A table of photographic research methods for all stages of design thinking, from empathy to prototyping, is presented. Best practices for the successful implementation and interpretation of photography in food design thinking are discussed.

Photography is a uniquely inclusive and accessible research method for understanding the social problem of food well-being and designing innovative food experiences.

To the best of the authors knowledge, this paper provides the first conceptual foundation for the use of photography in design thinking. The paper identifies novel photographic methods that can be used to understand problems and generate solutions. It provides guidelines to successfully integrate photography in the design of innovative food experiences that improve food well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the meal context and the food offering in Quebec public nursing homes for non-autonomous seniors, particularly with respect to first-generation immigrants.

A focused ethnography approach was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three distinct groups: non-Quebec-born residents (n=26), their families (n=24) and frontline care staff (n=51). Structured non-participative observations were made in facilities.

First-generation immigrants, however, long ago they arrived in Quebec, adapted with difficulty and often not at all to the food offering. Resident’s appetite for food offer was a problem for reasons related primarily to food quality, mealtime schedules, medication intake, physical and mental condition, and adaptation to institutional life. Family/friends often brought in food. Care staff tasks were becoming increasingly tedious and routinized, impacting quality of care.

Institutions should render procedures and processes more flexible and adapt their food offering to the growing diversity of their client groups. For residents, the meal experience is profoundly transformed in nursing homes in terms of form, conditions, rituals and meaning. A better understanding of lived situations shaped by a more refined cultural sensitivity would go a long way toward achieving a better quality of life not only for residents but also for their families and friends. Care aides, on whose shoulders rests the responsibility of ensuring that meals are safe and pleasant moments for socializing and maintaining social dispositions, are ambivalent about their work.

The paper is based on an original study. To the authors’ knowledge, the literature on the meal context and food offering in Quebec public nursing homes, regardless of population type, was non-existent. Analyzing and interpreting the results by crossing the discourses of immigrant residents, their family and friends, and frontline care staff made it possible to reveal different aspects of the phenomenon, which, if considered together, shed light on the meal context in public nursing homes.