ABSTRACT
Three complementary approaches, from sociology, nutrition and marketing, were brought together in our study of the ‘Marriage Menu’. This research project aimed to examine the nature and process of changes in food choice and eating habits during early marriage, a crucial period in the life course. The thinking behind our aims reflects the call for alterations in the nation’s diet that is part of current public health policy (Department of Health 1992). We reasoned that if dietary change is, in some fashion, to be engineered, then understanding how changes occur naturally may reveal the influences at work. Maldng these influences apparent might then allow planned interventions to take account of what happens in any case and thus improve the likelihood of success. Our study focused on marriage as one situation where it was reasonable to expect that dietary change would indeed be occurring naturally. It was also one in which those involved were highly likely to be more than usually conscious of diet, food planning and preparation and, as likely, to be readily able to report and comment on the way any changes came about. Periods of transition can highlight elements of daily life which otherwise often go unnoticed or unquestioned. Choice, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (5th edition), is ‘the act or power of choosing; preference; variety to choose from, thing chosen’. We acknowledge that choice is not entirely ‘free’ but constrained by what food is made available via the food system (i.e. production, manufacturing, retailing and distribution). Our interest is in the act of choosing, the power to choose, the ability to choose and the extent to which food choice is negotiated in the transition or ‘honeymoon’ period. In other words we were looking not only at what was chosen, but why it was chosen and what it told us about how the couple went about it. Food choice, in this project, extended beyond any one instance to a consideration of preceding experiences (including individual preferences, shopping patterns and access to food outlets) and past experiences and expectations.
