Browsing by Subject "työaikainen ruokailu"

Objectives. The purpose of this study is to find out how workers, who do not have the opportunity to dine their workplace canteen organize their in-work meals. I apply a perspective of home economics science to my research in a way, that I am not primarily interested in what the men under my study eat, but rather I focus on the accounts on how they organize their working-time meals. I try to understand man as a thinking and functioning being who interacts with his environment. The goal of everyday human activities is to maintain the basic conditions of life, such as access to food, which makes eating during work an object of daily activity. Very little research has been done on the eating habits of workers. Prättälä (1998) studied the effect of working conditions for foresters and carpenters on. Viinamäki (2010) studied lunch patterns of hospital staff members, and Tuikkanen and Mikkola (2015) studied the working hours of factory workers. Workers' eating habits have long been a concern and working conditions are known to affect working hours. Changing one´s eating habits is challening and it is known that workers only start changing their diet when the health reasons weigh more than their shoulders can handle. In order to make changes, it is important to understand why workers act the way they do and what meanings their eating habits involve. Methods. This research is qualitative and the data were collected by interviewing. Altogether seven interviews were conducted, and the interviewees were aged 30-53. They lived northern Finland. The interviewees worked in different jobs at different workplaces and were united by the lack of a workplace canteen. The data were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusions. The results of this study show that workers arrange in-work meals regardless of the prevailing conditions. Very different solutions are made in similar working conditions, because different tactics are used to organize the working-time meals. These tactics represent, the meanings given to meals as well as the worker's relationship to work. Workers feel that eating is everyone's own business and that the decisions made by others are respected.