La Feria e le pratiche alimentari in Costa Rica: implicazioni per le politiche sugli ambienti alimentari

The changing face of malnutrition, that includes a global rise in levels of obesity, has brought to the fore the importance of re-shaping food retail environments in such a way as to make them more conducive to consuming healthy diets. Food retail environment metrics have centered around measuring the “external” food environment, i.e. the availability (and relative price) of healthy/unhealthy outlets in specific neighbourhoods measured in terms of proximity and density. Faced with inconclusive results on the correlation between the objective food environment data and dietary intake, more recent approaches have called for a greater attention to more “subjective” aspects of the food environment. In this context, this thesis introduces social practice theory – enriched with a spatial dimension - as a sociological framework that can better explain the underlying drivers of why people choose certain outlets rather than others. Given the dialectical relationship between food practices and the “external” food environment, it also helps to better understand the role of food outlets in shaping desirability and food practices. The thesis rests on three hypotheses: namely that people’s food practices, which include people’s movements in space in relation to food, influence their choices of food outlets; that by so doing they also influence their dietary patterns; and that food outlets in which people shop influence their food practices. In order to address the above hypotheses, the research has used the case study of Farmers’ Markets in Costa Rica, and has employed a mixed-methods approach. Overall, 35 respondents were interviewed on their food practices – intended as being made up of the meaning, the competence and the material aspects linked to food – and on their dietary patterns. Data was also collected on their residential food environments and on the relative density of healthy/unhealthy outlets in select areas that respondents regularly visit. Results show that the food practices people are engaged in help steer the way people interact with their external environment. In the case of people who visit the Feria, there is a dominant “colour” of meaning that emerges from people’s narratives, governed by a concern for health and wholeness, which includes conviviality, and a domestic repertoire of justification based on trust and tradition. This, and the related suite of tacit and embodied competences that they have learnt and strengthened in the Feria, is what has drawn them first and kept them subsequently within the Feria, with positive implications for their dietary patterns. Their movements in space, and the way they interact with their external environment, testifies to respondents’ commitment to a certain “healthy” way of “knowing” food. There are, however, certain “minimum” aspects of the external environment that need to be in place in order to attract and sustain healthy elements in people’s food practices, and the thesis concludes by sketching out the role of policymakers in making sure that these aspects are put in place in a way that takes existing food practices into consideration.