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Adolescents are at a stage in their life course in which they increasingly become choosers, buyers and preparers of food. Hence, they develop and employ required competences. Current food-related competences of adolescents are shaped in an environment with an abundance of convenience foods. Simultaneously food education has been limited in many western countries. The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize how young practitioners engage with the notion of convenience in a context with a strong presence of convenience foods.

Empirical data for this paper have been collected in a Dutch high school context following a participatory approach in focus group discussions. Data have been gathered from different food-related exercises within a classroom context.

The findings indicate that adolescents’ food competences and meanings are heavily shaped by the abundant presence of convenience foods. Adolescents perceive a nuanced picture of a skilful consumer that incorporates convenience foods in ways that minimize time efforts, preserves some preparatory tasks for fun cooking and has knowledge about health effects of fatty and salty foods.

The investigation takes a novel look on convenience food consumption from a practice perspective scrutinizing competences through the lens of adolescent practitioners. The authors make a plea for tapping into the potential of research on children and adolescents as novice performers of practices to understand how practices are shaped and changed and how practices recruit new practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to address how food, social status as well as the interactions at the food bank induce emotions in receivers, such as shame, gratitude and anger. Since early 2000s a steadily growing number of low-income and/or over-indebted households in the Netherlands alleviate their situation with food donations from local food banks. Such food banks collect from companies edible food that would otherwise have gone to waste. The growing demand for food assistance indicates it is a welcome contribution to the groceries in many households. However, receiving food assistance as well as eating the products forces the receivers to set aside embodied dispositions towards food and norms about how to obtain food. Furthermore, it places them in interactions of charitable giving that may be harmful to the self-esteem of receivers.

The paper is based on a qualitative study at a food bank in the Netherlands, consisting among others of in-depth interviews with 17 receivers of food assistance, observations and several interviews with volunteers.

Of all emotions that were expressed during the interviews, shame appeared as the most prominent. Particularly issues of shame emerged in relation to all three food-bank-related experiences: the content of the crate, the interaction with volunteers and lastly the understanding of one's positioning in a social hierarchy. While shame can be a very private emotion – even talking about being ashamed can be shameful – it is also an utterly social emotion.

This research is among the few ones explicitly addressing emotional emotions related to receivers in food bank.