The ways in which people learn to cook, or learn about food more generally, is often shaped by social experiences. Whether this is family, friends, in school or social media, this learning is often continuous, happening throughout life. Many interviewees remembered learning at their mothers side, observing or directly helping parents prepare food from a young age. For others, such as Diana Braggs, learning about British food cuisine was a way of managing generational differences in eating habits;

Diana Braggs Transcript

Interviewer: what was the idea behind the cookery group then?
Diana Braggs: we we started a group here for Asian women. And we discovered that their interests were also in cookery, besides craft and needlework and learning more about the Western habits and things
Interviewer: and did you find the cookery was a very popular option to do?
Diana Braggs: yes, it was quite popular then you know, because quite a number of the women were mothers and they wanted to learn how to make biscuits, cakes. And they also wanted to know about the fish fingers because the children kept saying what they had at school dinners [laughter] and that's how our cookery group started.
Interviewer: so from doing the sort of traditional Asian cookery, you then passed on to English cooking.
Diana Braggs: yes, yes.
Interviewer: and what sort of things did you learn? Teach cooking them?
Diana Braggs: well, we-- you mean I-- what did I teach them yeah? We did sponge cakes. We did oat biscuits. They were mostly eats you know, not really meals.
Interviewer: so very sort of sweet things and snacks.
Diana Braggs: yes, most of them are sweets and snacks.

As discussed by Diana, food knowledge sharing here can be seen as a way of expressing and understanding culture, and as a social connector, providing a common language to bridge diverse groups in Birmingham.

For many, the role of food lessons in schools was significant and a formative time in their experience of food. Many reflected on the gender division in food technology classes, with some of the male interviewees reminiscing on wanting to take part in the lessons. Individuals often brought in their own basins and jugs to take food home in, and sometimes shared this with their neighbours. One interviewee, Lil Stephens, reflected on how school meals shaped children's understanding of the wider practice of eating:

Lil Stephens Transcript

Interviewer: how important do you think school meals are for feeding children generally?
Lil Stephens: Well, I think the school meals now are more important than they ever were. They were needed mostly in the old days, but now, with the unemployment and people on very low incomes, then the school meals is a very important part. If you go to some of the poorer areas of Birmingham, see the children arrive for school, you'll realise they’ve had no breakfast, and you can always tell at dinner time who are the hungry ones, they're there waiting for seconds and thirds, if they’re going. Its most important part is school meals in the system of today. How long we can keep on? I don't know with lady Thatcher, but it's something I think that the people of Britain must demand that they keep. With mothers out of work, and they're having to go to work to supplement the income, then the children are left around the street, or perhaps go and get a sandwich up the milk bar or something. Then school meals is the most important part. It don't only feed them, it teaches them how to eat. The ladies have a role to play in teaching children how to behave at the dinner table, and I think that's a message that also gets through from the school meals ladies.

Many interviewees spoke about the gradual, generational loss of food-related knowledge and skills over time. Traditionally, learning ‘at your mother’s hip’ as described above was a key method of passing down this knowledge, but various societal changes have disrupted that practice. For example, the home environment plays a crucial role in shaping children’s eating habits and serves as an important space for learning. However, this space is changing; with increasing time pressures on daily routines due to people working longer, families being more geographically dispersed and the technology evolving the types of food eaten, mean that young people are spending less time around the dinner table. Younger generations increasingly prefer quick, easy-to-prepare foods over traditional dishes that require time and skill. This decline in intergenerational knowledge transfer has contributed to a diminishing understanding of how to prepare and cook food, as well as a reduced awareness of its nutritional value. This is a phenomenon noted by interviewee Arnold Tranter, a butcher in Digbeth;

Arnold Tranter Transcript

Karen Hull (interviewer): So you don't have an educational role as much?
Arnold Tranter: Quite a lot I find myself being approached by the younger generation for advice because having been in the area for so long, word has got around that I am a butcher, and I pride myself in being such and therefore I am able to advise the younger ones if necessary, as which is the applicable cut to what they're preparing. Unless they bring like, we do get instances where they bring the actual cookery book.
Karen Hull: So if somebody came to you and said look, I'm I'm very hard up. I have very little money but I want some meat what would you advise them to buy today?
Arnold Tranter: Well I would still advise them to buy the cheaper cuts as long as they're prepared to cook them in the proper manner. The time limit is still another big factor in the housewives life today. There are so many things involved that the housewife no longer stays home cooks and feeds the kids and watches [??], she's also a money earn a wage earner, so time is limited. You see, and therefore they should-- the cheaper cuts have gradually faded out because they just haven't got time or the knowledge to handle them.

As deindustrialisation spread across the UK, Birmingham experienced significant job losses as factories relocated overseas, leading to a decline in manufacturing employment. Between 1971 and 1981, the city lost 200,000 jobs, primarily in the manufacturing sector (Smith, 1995). The high-calorie meals once consumed by factory workers have largely been replaced by sandwiches and salads, which still dominate the lunchtime options today (Whillans, 2024). Interviewee Robert Bleasdale reflects on the rise of sandwich culture;
‘So all these people buying a cooked lunch in the middle of the day?

Robert Bleasdale Transcript

Robert Bleasdale: Yes. Do quite a good lunch tray. Typical lunch menu would be roast beef, three, two vegetables. That's two pound 15. Steak and kidney pie and chips and peas, two pound 15. Macaroni cheese 85 pence, fish and chips one pound 70. All types of grills. Bacon sausage, beef burgers, eggs, chips. the national stable diet [laughter].
Interviewer: So you're not reflecting the trend in some places for people to grab a sandwich at lunchtime and get—and have their main meal in the evenings.
Robert Bleasdale: We do a very good sandwich trade. I would say on average we do about 120, 130 sandwiches a day. might not sound a lot but it is that's when I took over four years ago we was only doing about 50 sandwiches a day.

Other interviewees recalled either going home for lunch, eating at an industrial canteen or occasionally having a pub lunch. The shift towards the shortening of lunch breaks from the 80s onwards reflects broader work-life culture, with Brits often eating at their desks due to informal social norms.

Significant technological shifts have worked to reshape food habits. The rise of convenience foods, defined as foods that were commercially pre-prepared for ease of the consumer, was driven by developments in food technology. Everyday items now such as microwaves and freezers were radical catalysts to pre-packaged food in the 70s. Initially marketed to housewives as a means to keep home-grown produce and baked goods fresh, freezers became more common. By the mid 1970s, small compartments in the tops of fridges became normal for some, with a third of the population owning a freezer. This rose to over half by 1980, which saw the advent of another key technology: the microwave. Originally marketed as an oven, the microwave found its niche through association with frozen foods, speeding up the defrosting process, and making accessible foods for the time poor. However this technology duo was not always popular, and microwaves only found their way into British homes in the early 1980s (McMeekin and Tomlinson, 1998) when this collection was recorded. Interviewee Roy Elvis explains the rise of these technologies and how they have been shaped by globalisation;

Roy Elvis Transcript

Roy Elvis: The same point in time, the advent of the convection oven was born. Because one needed a convection oven to reconstitute these frozen meals very, very quickly. For the following 10 years or so, convenience foods were used in most factory canteens and in a lot of restaurants, and general catering establishments. And around about the early 70s, somewhat new ideas came in from the states, high pressure steaming ovens. The object of these was to reconstitute frozen foods as well, as well as the convection oven. And these would reconstitute the frozen vegetables far more efficiently and far better condition than the convection oven would. At the same time, the fast food marketplace began to develop. Because now industry had the method of reconstituting food quickly. The fast food industry could take off, at that time hamburgers came along with you, the American system. But as you know the most of these were frozen anyhow, so they had to be defrosted. And also this came about the use of commercial microwaves for defrosting procedures. So all in the range of probably between 68 and 75, we had some flood on the marketplace of of American style equipment, which was to be utilized for reconstituting frozen or convenience foods very quickly.

McMeekin, A. and Tomlinson, M., 1998. Diffusion with distinction: the diffusion of household durables in the UK. Futures, 30(9), pp.873-886.

Smith, B.M., 1995. Birmingham: A Study in Geography, History and Planning. Urban Studies, 32(6), pp.1023-1025.

Whillans, J., 2024. The English workday lunch: The organisation, understandings and meaning of the meal. Sociology, 58(5), pp.1190-1206.

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