Captive Foodscape Studies

CapFoodS is the meeting place for Captive Foodscape Studies community. It contains news, events and other important information in the growing field of Captive Foodscape Studies (CFS) Foodscape studies is a growing area of research among scientists engaged in the study of foodways and it claims to be offering a well suited conceptual foundation that can be used to accommodate the holistic approach that is needed to understand the complex social interactions taking place in relation to eating in an early age in preschool.

According to Adema (2007) foodscapes consists of cultural, economic, historical, personal, political and social landscapes that are related through food. Adema points to the ability of the notion of foodscapes to be able to describe relationships between people, food and surroundings (Adema, 2009). Foodscapes in institutional setting can be referred to as ‘captive foodscapes’ to illustrate the special importance of places where we eat frequently in “captive” daily life, such as schools, preschools and institutions (Mikkelsen, 2011; Mikkelsen 2014; Torralba & Guidalli, 2014). These foodscapes can be assumed to be of special dietary importance due to the high frequency of eating there.

The idea of foodscapes is further inspired by Gibson’s notion of affordances (1986). Affordances are the action possibilities that the environment offer and that comes into play through the perception of individuals. In this case the foodscape of the preschool can be argued to hold possibilities for promoting healthy eating as well as for creation of food literacy through both the foodservice and the learning potentials latent in the preschool environment. These possibilities exist in relation to the agents and as a result are dependent on the agents’ ability and willingness to recognize these capabilities.