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Agric Hum Values (2009) 26:167176 DOI 10.1007/s10460-008-9153-x
Discomforting comfort foods: stirring the pot on Kraft Dinner
and social inequality in Canada
Melanie Rock Lynn McIntyre Krista Rondeau
Accepted: 4 December 2007 / Published online: 22 August 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract This paper contrasts the perceptions of Canadians who are food-secure with the perceptions of Canadians who are food-insecure through the different meanings that they ascribe to a popular food product known as Kraft Dinner . Data sources included individual interviews, focus group interviews, and newspaper articles. Our thematic analysis shows that food-secure Canadians tend to associate Kraft Dinner with comfort, while food-insecure Canadians tend to associate Kraft Dinner with discomfort. These differences in perspective partly stem from the fact that Kraft Dinner consumption by food-secure Canadians is voluntary whereas Kraft Dinner consumption by food-insecure Canadians frequently is obligatory. These differences are magnied by the fact that food-insecure individuals are frequently obliged to consume Kraft Dinner that has been prepared without milk, a fact that is outside the experience of, and unappreciated by, people who are food-secure. The food-secure perspective inuences responses to food insecurity, as Kraft Dinner is
commonly donated by food-secure people to food banks and other food relief projects. Ignorance among food-secure people of what it is like to be food-insecure, we conclude, partly accounts for the perpetuation of local food charity as the dominant response to food insecurity in Canada.
Keywords Canada Food banks Food charity
Food insecurity Food security Hunger
Introduction
Kraft Dinner was perhaps the rst food product sold in a kit with a long shelf life, and with rapid home-based assembly in mind. While Kraft Dinner is currently sold in a variety of avors and formats, the ever-popular original version is sold in a cardboard box containing 225 g of dried macaroni made with enriched wheat our and an envelope of powdered cheddar cheese. Kraft launched this product in Canada and the United States in 1937, when Depression-era hardships created a niche for an inexpensive meatless entre; this niche market subsequently expanded with rationing during WWII (Jacobson and Salamie 2002). Today, Kraft Dinner is the top-selling grocery product in Canada (Allossery 2000). Canadians annually purchase about 90 million boxes of Kraft Dinner , and consumption is...