Disposable commensality: Strategies for the selection of meals in the office

Abstract

In order to understand the act of eating it becomes necessary to place it within a determinate society, time and space, which are structured by concrete practices and organized by specific rules and norms. Knowledge about food consumption within the working space is relevant because the food practices deployed during office hours are linked to the relation between energy use andthe replenishment of energies necessaries for the working tasks.These strategies of selection of meals by the women interviewed were organized in the articulation between the available physical space, the body and the available time for eating. These women seek to eat in the fastest time possible and therefore consume "fast food" and "light" food. At this way, a "disposable commensality" is structured as a way of everyday eating in the office, wherethe relation heavy/fast organizes the food practices in contrast to the body used as a recipient.The data for this article is part of a wider research in which I seek to describe the everyday eating practices of working women within the spaces of national public offices, in relation to their eating and commensality. The article begins with (a) the exposition of the bases connecting bodies/emotions with eating; b) present the meals selected daily and the strategies for the selections of these meals as explained by the women and c) d) explain the relation between food/body/space.