Visual Consumption

As this week's class is all about children's literature, I thought it would be appropriate to consider my own childhood in this blog and the way it was shaped by food. In particular, I am looking this week at the way children's food is presented visually and the impact this can have, comparing the illustrations and descriptions found in children's literature with my own experiences. The reason I have chosen to do this is because a large number of my earliest important memories are centred around food, recalled by the vibrant colours and textures they introduced. However, whether that tells you about the influence of food on memory or simply my own gluttony I'll let you decide.

As an unbelievably rotund child, I never shied away from a good plate of food and, much to my grandmother's delight, I often came back for a second; much like Oliver Twist, I was never afraid of asking for "a little more."

I was famed in my family for my sweet tooth, devouring anything with the slightest sprinkling of sugar but in spite of that, I was never unhealthy. I was rarely sick as a child and by the age of 15 my mum was relieved to find that the spare tyre I'd had sitting on my waist was in fact the "puppy fat" she had always claimed it was.

For although I had a healthy appetite as a child, it was always just that - healthy. Whenever she could, my mum would make the time to cook a proper meal and accordingly, both me and my sister always had an interest in food. A few weeks ago when I was back at home I asked my mum how she managed to raise two kids who didn't turn their noses up at "green stuff", kids without a single food phobia between them. Her answer... choice and colour. There was always a selection of food to pick at on the table and we could help ourselves to whatever we wanted, but it was always something healthy. There would be a bowl of nuts or a glass of celery and we would just graze. My mum worked on a farm and it's only just occurred to me that she used the same principle for horses and her children; regular exercising and a constant supply of grazing.

I joke about this but my parents must have done something right because to this day I've never refused to try a meal.

Willy Wonka... (1971)

From this memory of my childhood I started thinking about the way food is represented in children's literature. In Roald Dahl's books for instance, food is either revolting or resplendent and, more often than not, this is determined by who created the meal. Food which is made by adults becomes a grotesque mouthful of "Mr Twit's Beard Food" whilst that made by children is exciting and extravagant, such as that of the child-like Willy Wonka and his recipe for Fudgemallow Delights. Although there is an obvious divide between the sugary children's recipes and the savoury ones belonging to the adults in Dahl's work, it is the freedom of choice and range of colours in the former which makes these recipes so appealing to children. This entry will therefore look at the role colour and choice have in children's literature, using my own personal experience to analyse this point.


Last year I did some volunteer work with a group of primary school children in a summer camp and had learnt just how difficult some children can be when it comes to food. The phrase "I don't like!" still sets my teeth on edge after being uttered at every meal by a small Italian boy who refused to eat anything other than mozzarella and ciabatta.

Bruce Bogtrotter, Matilda (1996)

Lorenzo, the 4 year old food critic I will always remember for disliking anything other than the finest Italian produce. He was a nice kid but knew how to throw one hell of a tantrum and one day, as we were preparing to open our fresh produce market (a project we'd been working on with the class), he decided he "didn't like" that either and promptly removed himself from the group. I tried to get him to return with the others but no sooner than I had reached him, he had been enveloped into the arms of his beautifully authentic Italian grandmother who appeased the young man with an inordinate slice of cake and began shouting "NO! NO! Don't make him go! Let him eat the cake." The child sat grinning on his grandmother's knee, chomping his way through a piece of cake which would make even Bruce Bogtrotter envious. However, fearing the grandmother's wrath, I decided this a battle best left for another day.

Yet it was not long before Lorenzo was up on his feet and back with his class as the sights and smells of the market enticed him. The children had been to Borough Market and chosen their favourite fruit or vegetable to take home; buying purple cauliflowers and yellow tomatoes, oversized apples and miniature pumpkins, spiky dragon fruits and  squidgy passion fruits. None of them could resist dragging their parents up to the front to show them their treasure, revealing the hidden secret of where you can find a yellow courgette in central London. The visual spectacle of food had entranced these children as their eyes feasted on the delights before them, reminding them of the independence they had been given in choosing exactly what they wanted and the overloading the senses with a bombardment of sights and smells. Lorenzo palmed off his cake to a rather dejected-looking grandmother and ran to find his record-breaking marrow, determined to retrieve it from the clutches of the undiscerning public. He returned with his disproportionate prize soon after to a grandmother who looked, for all intents and purposes, like the owner of a cat who has just been presented with the corpse of a dead pigeon.

The food placed at her feet had once been a tool of nurture and maternal control but now this belonged to her grandson, it was a way for him to assert independence and make choices without her impetus. Food in this sense becomes a metaphor for liberation in many children's texts as the choice and experience offered by sensual enjoyment offers a world  outside that of parental control.

It is for this reason that Bruce Bogtrotter is emancipated in Matilda as he consumes the entire cake- he is no longer bound by the expectations and rules of adult society. In this text (film), as well as others, it would seem food becomes a trope for expressing the transgression of social boundaries as the refusal of normal/adult foods leads to the subversion of normal/adult values.

See this article for more on Dahl:
Dahl.htmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/3334427/A-plateful-of-Dahl.html