Eleventh International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

A review of studies on the dining experience in senior living facilities reveals food’s main role to be to maintain or improve residents’ physical health. Though policy recommendations include enhancing seniors’ enjoyment of food and their social experience of eating, the ultimate goal of these recommendations is to increase food intake, which reduces malnutrition rates as well as the (expensive) dependence on dietary supplements and medications. This paper argues that the institutional emphasis on health outcomes subjects residents to unexamined forms of sensory politics and leaves many important additional questions about the experience of food and eating in nursing homes unaddressed. Focusing in particular on the experience of female nursing home residents, this paper considers what it is like for women who were in charge of their domestic terrain for most of their lives to give up this control as they are forced to adopt an institutional daily rhythm and transition to a situation of dependency. What is it like for women to switch from caring with food to being cared for with food? And how do elderly women adjust their gendered identities with this loss of reproductive work and the relinquishing of their role as trusted caregiver? This paper addresses both the theoretical understanding of food as a key regulatory tool that aligns senior bodies with the biomedical health goals of institutions and the state, as well as the practical implications of moving beyond this narrow conceptualization of food.