Eating Practices: Balancing Autonomy, Investment, and Taste Perception

Abstract

The article is based on practice theory, which is widely used in contemporary international nutrition research to analyze everyday food consumption as a process shaped by the interplay of individual choice, social norms, and structural conditions. Modern nutritional practices are conceptualized as a multi-layered system comprising bodily, material, symbolic, and institutional elements. This study presents a typology of food practices derived from a corpus of materials collected during a qualitative sociological investigation, which included 60 semi-structured, focused interviews with residents of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis, allowing the identification of stable logics of food-related behavior that reflect not only individual preferences but also the influence of the social context. A typology is proposed based on three analytical axes: autonomy — the degree of individual freedom in making nutritional decisions; investment — the level of resource expenditure in the process of meal provision; taste perception — the extent of reflective consumption and the diversity of taste experiences. The identified types include: adaptive-situational, proactive, assertive-delegating, adaptive-forced, and family-inclusive. These types illustrate a spectrum of practices, ranging from subordination to external constraints to deliberate regulation of diet. The study also demonstrates that structural factors—such as economic conditions, infrastructural accessibility, and social and gender inequalities—shape access to various resources (time, finances, knowledge), which in turn influence the degree of autonomy in nutritional decision-making, the level of investment in organizing the daily diet, and the potential for developing taste awareness. Agency in this domain is not expressed as free choice but rather as the capacity to adapt practices within the framework of prevailing social norms and constraints. Nutrition thus functions as a mechanism for reproducing social status, gender roles, and other structural differences.

Acknowledgements. This article is the result of the author's independent analysis of empirical data collected during the implementation of the project named "Lifestyle of Modern Russian Society: Regional and Professional Aspect", supported by the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy in 2024-2025. The authors express their gratitude to the Institute and personally to Daria Tsyplakova for facilitating the implementation of the project.