2004 Annual Meeting - Abstract

Fast and slow food in the fast lane: Automobility and the Australian diet
Sarah Hinde, Jane Dixon, Cathy Banwell and Heather McIntyre

A combination of car-reliance and convenience food has made a major contribution to changing Australian dietary patterns in the last half a century. Within the context of the supermarket phenomenon, cars have been relied upon for food shopping, and convenience has been esteemed for 40 years at least. Evidence suggests, however, that what we are calling “car-centred diets” are becoming more pervasive.

This paper will apply a cultural economy perspective to the Australian car-centred diet. Our approach has been to conduct a cultural economy audit of car-reliance, which revealed the extent to which the automobile structures, and is structured by, the lifestyles and social practices of Australians. We then used secondary sources and participant observation over six months to explore the ways in which car-reliance structures dietary patterns including the provisioning and preparation of food, consumption practices and products consumed.

The audit of car-reliance revealed how the automobile, which began as a novel, eccentric and a somewhat inconsequential technology has, in fact, transformed society to the point where life without cars in Australia is nearly unimaginable. This transformation extends to food provisioning, with car-reliance contributing to the delocalization of food systems, a phenomenon identified twenty years ago, as well as helping to relocalize them.

Car-reliance is a key feature of the simultaneous spread and compression of time and space that is characteristic of late modernity. A key feature of car-centred diets is the presence of points of exchange that allow the consumer to access food at almost any point in time and space. Our research has revealed that the car-centred diet has different manifestations, and we can identify both the car-centred fast food diet (CCFFD) and its counter-point, the car-centred slow food diet (CCSFD). Common to both is the role of automobility in structuring the production, distribution and consumption of food in Australia.

The essential role of the car gives rise to two extreme possibilities for how much time and space exists between the point of exchange and point of consumption:
1. The ability to purchase food, transport it large distances, and delay consumption for days or months. This feature underpins the CCSFD, which includes the gathering of produce from farmers markets, farm-gate outlets, and inner-city specialist providores; and
2. The ability to purchase food and consume it instantaneously ‘on the spot’ (or, in the car) where practices revolve around solitary eating by the person-on-the-go, grazing or snacking 24/7, and continuous novelty in products that are, more often than not, the outcome of sophisticated food technologies.

The paper elaborates the car-centred diet as depicted in the figure. We will compare and contrast some of the many discourses, meanings and practices that constitute the Australian fast and slow food car-centred diets.