Setting The Table: Why Dinnertime Is About More Than Just Food

WUNC News | By Frank Stasio,

Published May 9, 2019 at 11:59 AM EDT

Bowen suggests we can start to change the industrialized food system in this country with consumer-driven 'vote with your fork' actions that include a push for stricter regulations and a crack down on food marketing.

For years health experts have been touting the benefits of sitting down at the dinner table for a family meal. The tradition of a big Sunday dinner after church is not uncommon in the South, but not many people meditate on all of the labor that goes into making a home cooked meal possible.

Host Frank Stasio talks with sociologist Joslyn Brenton and Sarah Bowen about their collaborative research and new book, 'Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won’t Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It.'

With the increase in loaded moral language around food, three sociologists decided to investigate the social and economic dynamics of dinner time. In the book, “Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won’t Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It”(Oxford University Press/2019), Joslyn Brenton, Sarah Bowen and Sinikka Elliot share stories from their five years of research with more than 150 mothers and grandmothers. Their experiences highlight the gendered pressure on women to put “healthy” food on the table and the unique challenges for poor and working class families in our current food system. Brenton is professor of sociology at Ithaca College and Bowen is a professor of sociology at North Carolina State University. They join Frank Stasio to share their conclusions, including the role of food deserts and food access in the conversation about dinner time, andthe unequal burden placed on women to live up to societal standard crafted decades ago.