To Örebro University

The issue of human eating crosses many conceptual boundaries, from humanities and social science to natural science, and for that reason it must be interpreted from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. In this introductory chapter, we present the area of meal research and, more particularly, the development of the academic subject of Culinary Arts and Meal Science, at Örebro University in the School of Hospitality, Culinary Arts and Meal Science situated in the village of Grythyttan in the Swedish countryside, 70 kilometres from Örebro. The anthology presents original, multifaceted, and revealing perspectives from the institutions’ researchers on how to study culinary arts and meals. The contributions showcase a variety of angles on meal research, from sensory sciences and economics to sommellerie, aesthetics, food history, gender, culture, pedagogics, food innovation, and service and hospitality. The chapters make use of a variety of methods and theories. This variety is needed to unravel the complex phenomenon and understand all the elements of which a meal is composed. We choose to use the word “revealing” in our title, Revealing Meals, to insist on meals as revealing experiences and to highlight the ambition of our research to explore and reveal the “what” and the “how” of different meals. The goal of the anthology Revealing Meals is to present how we study meals at Campus Grythyttan and to inspire others who are interested in meals to take part in this never-ending exploration of how, why, and what 10 Revealing Meals we eat. The anthology brings together the past, present, and future of meal research by explaining the history of the field at our institution while positioning it in the Nordic landscape of meal research; by presenting what we do presently; and, finally, by pointing to new directions in culinary arts and meal sciences.

The need for competent hospitality workers is significant for the sustainable development of the restaurant industry. However, with the recurring challenges of recruiting and retaining a competent workforce, there is a need to understand how employers portray and communicate hospitality work in the recruitment process. Therefore, this study examines how employers construct the image of the hospitality worker, by analyzing what job advertisements signal and communicate to the applicants. Through thematic analysis of 100 job advertisements in Sweden, we found that the ideal hospitality worker is an individualized team player with occupational passion. This means that social capacities and commitment to hospitality and gastronomy, factors that are difficult to measure, are of relevance to gaining employment. Additionally, by asking for social capacities, the distance between work and leisure is diminished and the employee is constructed as a commodity for the purpose of improving service. In contrast to the common image that hospitality work is work that anyone could do, we conclude that the qualifications for becoming a hospitality worker in the restaurant industry are fairly complex.

In this presentation, the idea of sustainable development is elaborated on from a gastronomic perspective. Specifically, the focus is on how sustainable commitment can be cultivated by gastronomic communication. Four young culinary professionals with a bachelor's degree, referred to as gastronomes, participated in semi-annually recurring dialogic interviews (Mishler, 1999) during the first two years after they finished their education. By intertwining their knowledge with their experiences, they developed ideas of sustainability from a gastronomic point of view. They discussed how to communicate these ideas with other individuals via meals and their desired outcome from it. Data was interpreted by applying the principles of hermeneutics and a view of knowledge based on hermeneutic bildung (Gadamer, 1960). Using the Delphi technique, preliminary results were brought back to the next interview for further elaboration, and these recurring dialogues gradually brought the ideas of the researcher and the participants towards a common explanation.

In the results, ideas emerged on how gastronomic competency could contribute to sustainable development by cultivating inner capacities and fostering sustainable commitment. Two dimensions of how gastronomy can contribute to approaching a more sustainable society were identified: as cultivation-of-the-self (Larsson, 1908) and as civic bildung (Bohlin, 2018). Cultivation-of-the-self is present in sensuous meal experiences, where it can stimulate people to get involved in sustainability issues. This involvement at the individual level can engage people to further bring about sustainability at a societal level through civic bildung. These results contribute to an understanding of how a sustainable mindset can be cultivated by experiencing sustainable meals.

This article explores sustainable development from a gastronomic perspective. Humanistic perspectives on food offered by gastronomy are explored as an asset in cultivating self-awareness capacities needed for sustainable transformations of society. The purpose is to explore how gastronomes can cultivate understandings and explanations of sustainability to be conveyed to individuals via meals. In semi-annually recurring dialogic interviews, four university-educated gastronomes cultivated their understandings and explanations of sustainability, and modeled how these could be communicated to other individuals. The dialogues gradually brought the ideas of the researcher and the participants toward a common explanation of the potential ways gastronomic competency could advance sustainable development. The results highlight two ways of understanding gastronomic sustainability: functionally as practical communication, and formally as a cultural issue. Based on H.G. Gadamer’s idea of bildung as hermeneutic interpretation, we argue that self-awareness is a process which is rooted in how knowledge is interpreted, understood, and explained by the individual. Practical participation in culturally influenced meals makes gastronomy a bridge between individual and societal issues, whereby gastronomic competencies can cultivate sustainable commitment, judgment, and community. In this way, gastronomic sustainability represents an approach to sustainable development that, significantly, also involves the cultivation of sustainable meaning.

The increasing age of populations throughout the world means that healthcare services are faced with new challenges, not least regarding the provision of food during hospital stay. There is a lack of knowledge of how hospital mealtimes are experienced by older patients, and so the aim of this article was to review current knowledge regarding mealtimes in hospitals from the perspectives of older patients. A literature search was performed using seven databases: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Sociological Abstracts, SweMed+, ASSIA and CINAHL with no limits regarding publication date. The inclusion criteria were peer‐reviewed articles in English or Swedish that used qualitative methods to examine older patients’ (>65 years) mealtime experiences. The Five Aspect Meal Model (FAMM) served as a framework for understanding the complexity behind a mealtime experience. Qualitative content analysis was used as a guide when analysing the material. The search produced 415 studies, 14 of which were included in the review. The findings generated three main themes for understanding how older patients experience mealtimes while in hospital: (1) the food and the food service, (2) mealtime assistance and commensality during mealtimes and (3) the importance of retaining one’s independence. The review also clearly indicated a shortage of studies that solely focus on older patients’ experiences of their mealtime. More research is therefore needed to be fully able to understand the complex task of providing meals in hospitals.

A meal consists of both tangible and intangible dimensions. Menus and photos may be the only documentation from a meal, but experiences are rarely saved beyond memory. The aim of this study is to design a method for documenting intangible aspects of the professional experience of a meal craftsman, based on the memories associated with the files in an archive. By sorting the archive according to a specific process of documentation we managed to revive and document also the intangible aspects of these meals. In order to access the intangible aspects, a version of the Socratic method of dialogue was developed and used. This is exemplified by a case. The dialogues reunited intangible aspects from the memories of the designer, such as motives and drivers, with the tangible archive documents.

Sustainability is a key concern within the restaurant industry, which offers a variety of initiatives and approaches to it. This, in turn, creates different shared understandings, what we here call sustainable cuisine imaginaries. The practices fostered by these imaginaries are now facing unforeseen challenges due to the coronavirus pandemic, creating a dissonance in the way restaurants normally operate. By using storage and preservation practices as an entry point, this ethnographic study of six Swedish restaurants uses the concept of imaginaries to explore the different beliefs and ideals for restaurant sustainability and the practices fostered by those ideals. Three distinct imaginaries of sustainable cuisine were identified: locality as a quality, reducing meat in favor of vegetables, and the creative and knowledgeable professional. These imaginaries are materialized through different storage facilities, like root cellars, wine cellars, or meat aging fridges. This study shows how disruptions in restaurants, triggered by unexpected situations, exposed the fragility of these imaginaries. We argue that the sustainable cuisine imaginaries, as a complexity reducing mechanism, help restaurant professionals manage the intricacy of sustainability. However, they also demonstrate an array of simple solutions very susceptible to external factors. Sustainable practices can thus easily become unsustainable.