Browsing by Subject "koulussa syöminen"

Eating together is on change. The studies and the media are discussing the disappearance of family meals and the sociability of eating. At the same time there is an on-going discussion of new kinds of eating together where the traditional family meal is not the only option to eat together. Finns appreciate eating together and they want to promote the culture of eating together in Finland right now. Eating together has been chosen as one of the Finland's centenary themes. Eating together has also a strong visibility in food recommendations to families with children, published in 2016 and in school lunch recommendations, published in January 2017. The social dimension of eating has started to rise alongside the nutrition debate. The aim of this study was to examine what kind of views and experiences seventh graders have about eating together. Seventh graders are an interesting research object, as previous studies have shown that secondary school time is critical in terms of adolescents eating habits. According to previous studies the influence of peer group is significant to adolescents eating. While growing up adolescents start to eat less with their families and make more independent food choices. The qualitative data were collected in a secondary school in the Finnish metropolitan area in November 2016. The data consists of theme interviews with seventh graders. They were carried out during the home economics lessons. A group of 14 seventh graders (9 girls and 5 boys) participated the study. The interviews were transcribed and the data were analyzed by using thematizing. The interviewed adolescents considered eating together as a social event, during which they enjoy food and talk together with other diners. Eating together and alone were both parts of adolescents everyday lives. The results are partly in line with the results of previous studies handling eating of adolescents. The interviewed adolescents most common dining environments were home and school. Rush in everyday life created challenges to eat together in families of adolescents. At school, important to adolescents was eating together with their peers and eating school lunch had decreased in secondary school. Adolescents didn't experience a peer group to have an impact on their eating. Among other things, these results have been revealed by earlier research. Contrary to my hypothesis, it was interesting that the interviewed adolescents were daily eating together with their families and they were not used to eat with their friends at their free time. The adolescents didn't mention to try to avoid family meals but they told to eat with their families whenever everyday schedule allows.