Just did some research into commensality. Seemed to be extremely simple at first glance, people eating together, but the social impact is quite big. I am writing from the perspective of a curriculum researcher. We are not just looking at the nutrition and health benefits of the food we are eating, but the impact on who we eat with, when we eat with, how we eat with for instance. Different schools have different case studies for commensality. Schools with large numbers of students requiring school provided meals differ from those whose parents allow their kids to bring their own food. For inner city schools for eg, we are talking about eating up (eating with those who are higher in social status), the chances of the kids feeling inferior having a school sponsored meal in comparison with a great and delicious meal brought from home by a rich kid and so on and so forth.

Research about take into consideration individual eating versus group or family. There are two camps to this. One camp advocating family or group commensality as it binds the family or group socially and culturally, where another lament that encouraging communal commensality would infringe upon the rights of the individual. We also take a look at peer pressure. How it can be applied to help other kids eat right. Vegetables aren’t really popular, especially with me but through peer pressure, we notice that in case studies, the effects on students can be positive. They ate vegetables because their peers do.

Food

Another aspect is friends commensality, normally it helps to subconsciously group people of identical social standing together. It can help bond the individuals but also can create chasm within the society. The perspectives applied are multi dimensional, we are looking from the views of school superintendents, parents, sociologists, health care providers and so on. Just doing the research on young married couples eating together is quite a big topic, there is a lot of social, culture etc involved. A huge amount of material to digest.

I must congratulate myself for being far sighted enough to continue with Lund University. In no other research libraries can I find all the journal articles needed and I have research status at universities in Europe and USA. Only Lund University provides all the journals needed. The rest of the universities, some forward to the commercial providers. I estimated that the journal papers I need to refer to when doing this research can easily take up US$1000 if I were to purchase directly from the commercial database providers. All the articles and journals are easily found in full text in Lund University. Their research database and journals are impressive. Simply impressive! Only issue is it is very cold and very far from either Singapore or Melbourne. I really don’t like the distance. Other than that, the lecturers are fantastic, the research materials are extensive and the people are warm and friendly.