All Ireland Learning from "Decent food for all" - Part 1. Food culture in the Armagh and Dungannon Health Action Zone

Abstract

Food and food consumption is profoundly social. The way we think about food, decide what we eat, where to buy it and how to prepare it is linked with a range of social, cultural and economic factors. These ethnographic studies look at how some of these issues were expressed among participants in the ‘Decent Food for All’ (DFfA) intervention run by the Armagh and Dungannon Health Action Zone (ADHAZ) in Northern Ireland. They are a component of ‘All-Ireland Learning from the Decent Food for All’ Intervention’ a research and evaluation project coordinated by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) and funded by the Food Safety Promotion Board (FSPB). To date research related to cultural conceptualisations of food and food consumption has not been conducted in Northern Ireland, therefore these studies provides new empirical information.