Valérie Nicolas-Hémar attended the Third International Colloquium on Kids Retailing in Bordeaux, on 15th– 16th June 2017. She presented her paper “ ‘Food retailers make me happy’ What wellbeing means to children in food context”, written in collaboration with Pascale Ezan.
Abstract: Drawing on the FWB paradigm and positive psychology, this research does not only examine children’s food representations from a nutritional lens, but enlarge its scope to show how physical, cognitive, emotional and social factors, involved in food context, contribute to different aspects of wellbeing. The purpose of this article is then to provide a better understanding of what wellbeing means to children in the context of food consumption, and to formulate recommendations about the way food retailers may take actions in favour of children’s wellbeing.  It is based on a qualitative study based on a child-centric perspective conducted with 25 French children aged 6 to 11 years old. The data collection and analysis use focus groups and drawings in order to help children express their feelings and thoughts. The findings put forward that according to the children, the concept of food wellbeing (FWB) may be articulated around five other notions: pleasure, health, commensality, empowerment and kindness. Their discourses suggest that food contributes to both objective and subjective wellbeing, including hedonic and eudaemonic wellbeing.