Abstract:

The interdisciplinary Foodways and Futures project (2013-2016) is based on a pilot study which found no improvement in the nutritional state of formerly homeless young people (16-25), now in supported accommodation at a charitable youth organization. Because a healthy food intake during adolescence is important, and because young people with socioeconomic lower backgrounds face difficulties in maintaining a healthy diet (Beasley at al., 2005), I investigated how the young people themselves experience their relationship to food. In this paper I explore links between the lived experience before and during their stay with the organization of this vulnerable group, and their food choices and practices. The study illustrates the ways in which those choices and practices may appear nutritionally undesirable, but are nevertheless linked to the young people’s search for ontological security and social connectedness, in their new living environment. In this, I draw on and extend Schlossberg’s (1981) transition theory in order to better understand the rationales underlying an individual’s subjective food choices.

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