Paper short abstract:

Through the material practices of eating everyday school meals, this paper describes the taut negotiations between nutritional expertise, religion, & affect that feed into what are defined as ‘proper meals’. It reveals the variegated networks of trust, risk & uncertainty in which they are entangled.

Paper long abstract:

School meals in Britain (as also elsewhere in Europe) have emerged as a major public health issue in the midst of a 'childhood obesity crisis'. Successive governments have invested in intervention programmes such as the Healthy Schools Programme that seeks to provide increased access to free school meals freshly prepared everyday. These interventions are underpinned by notions of 'healthy choices' leading to 'healthy bodies', thereby seeking to reduce the burden of disease on the NHS in the context of scarce public funds. On the other hand, debates over the provision of halal food in British school meals and the possible ban of halal meat, have been intertwined with debates over the possible formalisation of certain aspects of Shari 'ah law under the mainstream British legal system, the display of faith symbols and making faith schools more 'inclusive', and 'multiculturalism' in Britain.

This paper focuses on the work of school meals in navigating these anxious debates. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the material practices of consumption (and preparation) of everyday meals in a multicultural state school cafeteria in east London, it describes the dynamic interactions between nutritional expertise embodied in meal plans and food labels on the one hand, and the religious, moral and affective dimensions of such mundane practices on the other. It highlights the taut negotiations integral to such interactions that feed into what come to be defined and eaten as 'proper meals'. In so doing, it illuminates the variegated networks of trust, risk and uncertainty in which they are entangled.