Browsing by Author "Vanne, Elina"

The aim of this master's thesis was to study the childhood food memories of 67-76-year-olds. In the first theoretical part of my dissertation I deal with food culture, its formation and the factors that shape it. I write about the history of Finnish food culture since 1945 and the journey towards the current state of Finnish food culture. In the second part of the theory, I write about food memories, previous studies of childhood food memories in Finland and childhood eating habits. My dissertation becomes part of home economics food research, because it deals with Finnish food culture, food memories, cooking skills, food service and even the history of Finnish families' daily lives. My research questions were: How childhood food memories are perceived? Who or what is involved? And in what ways do childhood memories appear in a person’s life at a later age? I did not make hypotheses or presuppositions, as I wanted interview material to speak for itself. The study was conducted as a qualitative study. The research material was collected through pair interviews involving people aged 67–76 years. The subjects were siblings and all of the interviewees were born and have spent their childhoods mainly in the cities of southern Finland. The interviewees were selected at discretion. They have lived their childhoods during the greatest food culture changes in Finland in the last hundred years. The interviews were collected as semi-structured thematic interviews, and the collected material was transcribed, themed and analyzed by means of material-based content analysis. The results of the study show that the role of the mother was the most important in childhood food memories, but the father and grandmother also play a major role in them. Food memories strongly reflected the spirit of the period studied, such as the availability of food, the possibilities of choice, the appreciation of food, Finnish food culture and the social situation. Childhood food memories perceived as positive and negative. Negative food memories are often ignored and there are less negative food memories than positive. There are a lot of positive food memories and they evoke nice and warm thoughts and feelings. In addition to the people, the sensory experiences were emphasized in the food memories. Of the sensory memories, the experiences related to the sense of smell and taste were the most pronounced, but the appearance of the food also affected the attractiveness of the food. The results of my research are largely consistent with previous research. The purpose of the study was to store unique and important Finnish food memorabilia that contain valuable information about history, create an understanding of the present and strengthen the field of home economics research.