A middle-brow taste? How ultraprocessed food consumption relates to class, the market and eating practices in France

Résumé En

We will present an updated version of our research on ultraprocessed food consumption and class in France. In Bridg’it 2022, we asked: is it a case of selective exclusion? Selective exclusion happens when the upper social groups are omnivorous but exclude some products that express lower-status tastes. Our conclusions were mitigated, because all households consumed UPF.The paper has now developed into a discussion of UPF consumption as expressing tastes typical of the intermediate social categories. We will discuss how this taste not only reflects social stratification but also households’ food-related practices (shopping, cooking and eating out), and food market segmentation, as some shopping venues are positively associated with UPF consumption.Our analyses of French Household budget survey 2017 show that 34% of the food budget is devoted to UPF in France. We found an inverted U-shape relationship between the budget share of UPF on the one hand, and educational level and household income per capita on the other hand. Cooking, home-production (even of a single product), shopping from small shops or streetmarkets, eating in restaurants (even infrequently) are associated with less expenses in UPF. In the end we suggest that UPF denotes a middle-brow taste, a taste that is typical of intermediate levels of the social stratification and that is not just a middle-ground between high- and low-brow tastes. This taste is characterised by a disposition to delegate to the market and enjoy what food manufacturers and distributors supply and advertise: recipes, tastes, textures, colors or shelf-life that cannot be reproduced at home .