Valérie Nicolas-Hémar presented her paper “Becoming a student or how achieving autonomy revisits the well-being in the field of food” written in collaboration with Lamia Sadoun and Pascale Ezan at “15èmes Journées Normandes de Recherche sur la Consommation” at the University of Caen, on November 24-25.
Abstract:
This research aims to understand students’ food well-being when they do not live at their parents’ any longer. To achieve this purpose, we implement a qualitative methodology based on 36 semi-structured interviews with 18- and 19-year-old students who are enrolled in the first-year program at the IUT of Evreux. The findings highlight that some of them have adopted an unbalanced diet. Visiting their parents weekly allows them to better eat and balance their diet. Besides, sharing mealtimes with their peers help them to better manage the stress generated by studies and then to improve their well-being. The peer group reinforce young people’s appeal to conspicuous products and brands, since this food consumption takes place collectively in the public sphere. Consequently, food brands exert an influence on nutritional learning through their discourse on the well-being.