Nesta Study Report-Sep 29

Working Paper: Cartogram of Commensal Eating June 2016
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Cartogram of Commensal Eating: Visualising the Sociality of Eating in Workplace
Rosa Grossman
MA Materials Anthropology & Design
University College London
Hilary Prosser
Tiffany Lee
Sakti Ramadhan
Abstract
To provide prompts to think about the sociality of eating and wellbeing at workplaces, we
researched lunchtime eating behaviour among working people, as well as the wishes for
and obstacles in the future of commensality. ‘The Cartogram of Commensality’ is a
scenario game based from the gathered information and analysis, as a design probe that
enables us to speculate possible futures of eating together during lunchtime at
work. One key conclusion that informed the construction of this cartogram is
the notion of the 'scalable sociality' (Miller 2016) in commensal eating. The flexibility in
crafting collective lunchtime extends not only to its physical elements, but also social
configurations. This, we suggest, happens in dialogue with the consensus in choosing
the food, environment, and time spent eating. Furthermore, the sympathy or antipathy
for the company along with the company culture affect the desire of socialising during
work time, thus also the possibility for eating together.
Introduction
Introduction
This writing serves as a complement to a research commissioned by Nesta that
aims to review the existing facts and approaches mainly from employers and policy

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makers in regards to communal eating, and to provide prompts to think about the
sociality of it in the future. Investing in researches that go beyond social innovation,
Nesta prompted this query by probing on the idea of food in the future and how it
relates to people.
Throughout history, eating has always been social, or at least practiced with
association to social contexts. There is a tendency in us to gather around, produce,
and share our meal with others. Classic ethnographic accounts unearthed numerous
cultural implications in meals, from transaction rules in food procurement to ritualistic
aspects, yet Richards (2004[1932]) reminded us not to overlook its primal
manifestation: shared eating is a ‘social fact’. It establishes bonds by compromising
the selfishness of nourishing oneself, reconciles collective identities, and as Simmel
(1961) asserted, shared food “satisfies a need for interaction by a union with others,
where conviviality establishes and reinforces social ties” (Sobal & Nelson 2003:181).
Commensality—originating from Latin words com- ‘together’ and mensa ‘table’—then
emerged as a concept to frame this very idea of sharing a table to eat and interact
(Sobal 2000) in various disciplines.
What is observable from our present time, however, is the growing perception of
‘structural individualism’ (Sobal & Nelson 2003) that seeped contagiously through the
post-industrial societies, making ways for both individualisation and privatisation of
eating (Fischler 2011). The promulgation of time as an irreversible commodity
lessened the duration spent for preparing and enjoying meals, and not counting the
social interaction that follows. This resulted in the prevalence of nonritualistic solitary
eating. Among all, workplaces, at which modern humans spend a large amount of their
waking hours, are where such phenomenon manifests predominantly. In many present

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time workplaces, this is worsened by the reprehensible perception on indulging in
meals as being idle. A feature on The New York Times Magazine about the
increasingly ubiquitous phenomenon of ‘desktop dining’ estimated 62% of American
professionals prefer to choose eating alone to “multitask better”1
. One key explanation
lies behind the shifting work culture itself. In preceding societies, the fact that people
work in groups allowed a synchronisation of labour, which in turn gave way to
systematic breaks for nourishment. Today, more and more specialised jobs require
less amount of physical work, and thus smaller room for collective synchrony in
working time, even when more than one person is doing similar task. Even in
concentrated work arrangements, where a large number of workers share the same
productive space, there are intricate tensions between what is seen as private and
public, or constructive and unproductive. Thus, when contrasting this concern with the
notion of wellbeing in workplaces, we identified at least two key issues that emerge
from this clash between solitary and communal eating in workplace. First, health and
nutritional problems, as a result from both inconsistent eating habits and failure in
attending to nutritional intake among professional workers, and second, the issue of
social and organisational development related to productivity and social as well
psychological wellbeing.
Quite fittingly, as a governmental charitable agency focusing on advancements in
innovation and policy, Nesta provided the authors with the necessary framework to
proceed with this research, and later served as one of the observed workplace
‘archetypes’. Our research underwent several iterative phases initially concentrating
at the materiality of food. However, it became apparent from our preliminary

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See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/failure-to-lunch.html, last accessed 26 May 2016.

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ethnographies that the issues were far more to do with the social and physical
environment rather than the presented food itself. Thus some of the questions
formulated are. how are people going to eat their food in communal settings: together
or apart? What are the barriers that influence the decision? How are the relationships
between humans, things, and ultimately the social and institutional environment play
a role in it? Firstly, we will be specifically looking at how institutional settings play an
important part in progressing this shift. For the sake of disambiguation, the choice for
this relevantly brown terming is by all means meant to include also non-work settings,
such as schools and universities. The limited duration of this project unfortunately
forced us to focus on professional environments; however, the extensive nature of this
sociocultural enquiry is expected to augment the benefits for policy makers and
institutions in thinking about social configuration in eating together beyond what is
observed in this research.
Commensality in Workplaces
In his historical and critical assessment of the sociality in eating, Fischler (2011)
chronicled the inevitability of privatisation of human lives in the past century and its
effects on food and eating. Studies conducted in no more than two decades ago
showed that solitary eating was socially depreciated even in developed countries, and
relevantly, the image of an ideal meal would always require the presence of other
people (Sobal & Jeffery 2003; Rodrigues and Almeida 1996). Yet today’s proliferation
of individualised dietary, for instance, encourages people to reflect more on each
personal intake and metabolic system and craft their eating habits out of it.

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Furthermore, food restrictions, preferences, and allergies contribute also to the loss of
collective eating identities shared in traditional communal meals (Sobal & Nelson
2003).
Health and Physical Wellbeing
Studies mapping the efforts in enhancing healthy lifestyle in workplaces are done
across intersecting disciplines. Investigating the business of regulated and subsidised
food provision in workplaces in Finland, Raulio et al. (2010) mentioned the
improvement of nutritional intake among workers in their conclusion. Policies imposed
by the government are also instrumental in this undertaking, as it urges employers to
comply with the national dietary recommendations. Subsidised worksite canteens
have grown to become significant in Finnish workspaces in the recent years (Raulio,
Roos & Prattala (2012). In the UK, as observed by Pridgeon and Whitehead (2013),
although similar recommendation was also published by the National Institute for
Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the unavailability of reasonably priced food
within workplaces deterred the staff from adhering to such guidance. Thus, the two
authors concluded, cost and choice of food became one of the barriers for workers to
achieve healthy eating aside from organisational structure, personal influences, and
food message (p. 93). This in turn is linked directly to organisational development:
Jensen (2011) estimated 1%-2% labour productivity is improved along with effective
organisational intervention in dietary and nutritional intake. A study conducted by
Kniffin et al. (2015) on the effect of organised lunches among firefighters suggested
that support for worksite eating, aside from facilitating collaborations and increasing
productivity, encourages also healthy eating.

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Sociality in Shared Meals
The restless wage earners can be very susceptible to devaluating the affairs of
preparing consuming meals during work time. The ease in obtaining prepared meals
and nourishment through vending machines and fast food restaurants instead of
regulated provision in workplaces (e.g. canteen or cafeteria) contributes much to
solitary eating, which in turn connects to the problematic desktop dining. In most cases
in workplaces, solitary eating is merely an unintentional consequence: it is a nuisance
to merge everyone’s time and nutritional requirements to prepare a feast on the table
every day. While flexible breaks in offices mean employees are not obliged to follow
anyone’s routine and give them freedom to rest from whatever work they are
engrossing themselves in and eat at any convenient time, those also endorse, rather
lamentably, the option to skip lunchtime altogether.
The surrounding environment, both social and physical, is found to be paramount. As
previously mentioned in our proposition, corporate culture, whether enacted as
regulations or organically constructed, shapes employers individually and communally.
The collective ‘moods’ of the company projected in the social environment affects
choices and possibilities in social interaction. On the other hand, worksite canteens,
cafeterias, or dining rooms in present time are also moving from the practical intention
of labor management (e.g. in industrial factories) to providing wellbeing and
collaboration (Kniffin et al. 2015). These ‘neutral spaces’, where employees take time
off their stressful roles, encourage informal interactions that build bonds (Ashforth et
al. 2007; Rothbard, Philips and Dumas 2005). Even the provision of water coolers at
companies with limited spaces can have social benefits: a study by Fayard and Weeks

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(2007) suggested that the fragments of comfort offered from the facility can simulate
smaller effects gained from eating spaces. Employer-sponsored sustenance is
particularly flourishing within companies dealing with technology and innovation.
Gavetti and Rifkin (2007) associated the trend with the tendency in such companies
to appear as efficient and forward-looking, and thus cafeterias were placed to provide
frugal commensality.
Yet as stated before, eating outside of working environments evidently appear to be
the principal choice for many scenarios due to the lack of space and food provision.
Taking breaks in to-go restaurants or coffee-shops also substitutes the stress
associated with physical environments such as the cubicles (Pina e Cunha, Cabral-
Cardoso, Clegg 2008). This is also the case with environments with limited attention
to employees’ wellbeing or fellowship. More often than not, eating apart from work
colleagues has additionally resulted from work-related tasks, such as obligations in
business lunches or in jobs that require transit. This is true in communal purposes as
well, where it can also work as a habit that ties social knots. Thus, while typically
unstructured, eating outside will be reserved as an aspect of the whole eating culture
in this study. Finally, feasts and occasional gatherings may also be present in the
nexus of worksite commensality. Examining the politics in liminality, i.e. the social
space ‘betwixt and between the original positions arrayed’ (Turner 1997), Sturdy,
Schwarz and Spicer (2006) highlighted the use of the ‘multi-structured layer’ in office
parties and gatherings to create union outside the known and routinised environment.
Methodology

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During the course of 2 months, we conducted qualitative research by means of
individual and semistructured group interviews and observations at two separate
workplaces in the United Kingdom. All of the informants were recruited to primarily
engage in structured working hours and share their space with colleagues. For the
purposes of this study, we also distinguished the insights from both professional
employees and employers.
The ethnography intends to include group interviews as a complement, not as
an opposition to individual interviews: this method reveals how thinking about
commensality are compromised constantly. This puts us also in a framework to
understand ‘third space’, i.e. the contested space between what is regarded private
and public (Smith 1999), in both commensality as well as the interview occasions when
people talked about it in the presence of other people they frequently share their food
with.
Case Study 1: Grace & Sarah
Grace, a 27-year-old Korean, works in a boutique medical research firm with a small
office and multiple branches around the world in Seoul. She has coworkers, but often
works on projects with overseas branches and, as a result, has a very different
schedule from her colleagues. She used to love socialising at lunch, but after moving
jobs, even though she gets along with her new colleagues, she no longer desires to
eat with them. She goes through phases of being very health conscious and enjoys
exploring the city she is in for different cuisines and good food.
Sarah, 28, is a Korean-American advertising director working in a large media agency
in New York. She went from a small boutique firm to a large corporate, but has always

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had very similar lunch hour patterns, regardless of where she works. Her workplace
has a ‘kitchen’ with free snacks, drinks, and alcoholic drinks provided on every floor.
After having spoken to two very different perspectives, neither of them talked much
about what the foods were, and spent much of the time explaining the office
environment they were in and the company culture. This was in contrast with how
these candidates described themselves as enthusiastic about food and eating. Thus,
in regards of eating between work routines, their choices are affected much more by
the company around them and they accepted lunch to be more of a ‘practical’ fueling
period in the day rather a meal they can really indulge themselves in. Grace
specifically highlighted the simplicity in solitary eating:
“I feel like at times, [eating together] adds to the workload and continues to stress me
out while I want to be taking a break, or it will be too time-consuming.”
Regretting the fact that her work environment does not provide enough space for
communal eating, Grace only eats lunch with her colleagues “less than once a week.”
This resulted in her reluctance to spending more time with them after or outside work
hours where job-related pressures are often expected to be minimal. Sarah’s
impression of lunchtime at her workplace, on the contrary, was predominantly positive:
she enjoyed the communal seating provided and spent a good amount of time in the
space not only to eat, but also work and socialise.
Case Study 2: Petra & Rosa

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Petra is British, currently in her late 50s, self-employed and spends time at different
TV studios but has had a long experience in eating with colleagues in her previous
jobs. Prior to her TV work, Petra worked as a newspaper journalist, and, being very
concerned about eating well, she grows her own produce and buys organic, seasonal
produce at local shops. She then compared those past impressions with the lunch she
has once a week at college where she is currently studying in a master’s programme.
Petra was not necessarily proactive when it comes to socialising, but enthusiastic
about her work and studies and enjoys eating with colleagues and fellow students
where discussion is about work and other shared interests and never touches on
personal or family issues, e.g. talking about artwork with her fellow students or about
projects with work colleagues. She embraces social ‘barriers’ not as a limitation, but
as a present condition that categorizes her social contacts: “I really liked these people
but I know nothing about any of their personal lives.”
Reflecting on company culture in television production and newspaper journalism in
an earlier era, Petra considered the loss of the obligatory and communal lunch break
as part of a wider cultural change:
“At work in the 80s everyone went down to the pub or the wine bar and everyone drank,
it was virtually mandatory, a one-and-a-half-hour lunch time was usual. You couldn’t
say you didn’t drink and everyone went back plastered. And we had luncheon
vouchers, everyone had vouchers which you could spend in any café or restaurant so
we were always going out to eat.”

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Rosa, 25, is a British educational support worker who works at two different locations:
one of them has a dedicated area for staff relaxation, where the atmosphere is
collegiate and friendly. In a sense, Rosa explained, this space is highly feminised and
conversation is mainly personal. Over lunch hour the talk is a lot about food, diets and
health, and people are generally interested in food. At the other sites there are no
spaces big enough for people to congregate. People tend to eat at their desks and the
difference in atmosphere is marked. There is a clear segregation according to types
of staff—and a sense that one sector looks down on another, “a sense of brewing
resentment and meanness about these environments”. Thus she compartmentalised
the different social environments in her two jobs (she at times used the words ‘nice’
and ‘miserable’ to address those correspondingly) according to both the ‘mood’ and
the structural arrangements of the worksite:
“Lunch is staggered so I spend the time in the staff lounge, some of us are eating,
others not, it’s nice to be together with these colleagues. At the other places the staff
are more segregated and I don’t really want to spend more time with them.”
Only occasionally her “miserable” workplace resorted to celebratory moments
such as birthdays or potlucks to have communal eating. One time, her colleague
brought in salmon and other picnic assortments which was “really exciting and [it]
made everyone a lot friendlier.” However, as there were no particular involvements
from the employers, Rosa felt that it would be hard to recreate the moment as a way
to promote sociability.

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Case Study 3: Aidil and Aisha
Aidil, 27, works in a multinational advertising agency in Paris, while 25-year-old Aisha,
currently a postgraduate student in London, has previously worked as a designer
assistant in a footwear brand. Both are Indonesian.
Aidil enjoys most of his lunchtime in a subsidised cafeteria inside his office building.
Having to work mostly in an isolated space where he communicates with other
coworkers only by means of digital devices, he regarded the need to socialise as
indispensable. There was ample space in the cafeteria, where seats can be adjusted
to accommodate from as small as two persons to bigger groups at long communal
tables. Yet what he was noticing was also the connection between his longer break
hours—he was, in sum, entitled to two hours of lunchtime and flexible hours—and the
general opinion on eating in his city:
“…congregating and enjoying long lunchtime is not only the corporate policy here. It’s
engrained in the culture and etched in every person’s psyche that people no longer
question their unique privilege and even surprised at the notion that people in other
cultures don’t enjoy the same luxury.”
Aisha often found her personal eating behaviour different when it comes to commensal
scenarios; even more in a professional setting where things run more structured and
rigid. On sharing food, for instance, while it is a common thing to do in a shared dining
table back at home in Indonesia, Aisha thought that it is 'hard to imagine to do the
same thing here in England', except for maybe a potluck session. Thus for her, plates
and other vessels work as private barriers of each persons' portion of food. She also

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pointed out how the acoustics of a place affect the whole experience of eating together.
Being aware of her talkative nature, she loves to use such occasions to discuss things
unrelated to work.
Case Study 4: Emilia and Marina
Emilia, in her mid 50s, is Brazilian who works as the president of a shopping centre
administration company in Brazil. Emilia always eats her lunch with the same
colleagues, who are all managers at the company. Predominantly, this is because she
and the managers go for lunch at a much later time than the other sectors of the firm,
so their timetable is not compatible; secondly because, during lunchtime, they
regularly talk about business matters that cannot be discussed amongst other sectors.
Because of the latter situation, she never socialises with her colleagues outside
working contexts, and has no desire to do so.
Her company has a well-structured canteen, yet although the majority of the
company’s employees eat at the canteen, she never does so. She goes to the same
restaurant most of the time, that is very close to her office and has “simple and well-
made food” in a buffet style, so each person makes his/her own plate with the sort and
amount of food they want to eat. They do share a dessert at the end of the meal. For
Emilia, dessert is an ideal food to share: it is about indulgence, not hunger, and serves
as a “ritual thing which marks the end of the lunch”.
Emilia also put an emphasis on how she used to have the opportunity to indulge more
in their lunch:

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“15 years ago, people used to go home for lunch and eat with their families, that would
be the ideal lunchtime for me, but it has become impossible because of time issues.”
Marina, 34, works in a fashion retail company in London as a buyer. Her workplace is
relatively small with modest facilities and no place to eat, so people would only go to
the pantry to prepare their food and go back to their desks to eat:
“People feel embarrassed to prepare their food right by someone who is working,
because it’s noisy and it smells. At the end of the day no one uses it, everyone eats
out.”
She adds that eating out is more relaxing, and she finds it necessary to have some
time to relax during lunch. At her company, she is allowed to have a flexible hour
break; however, she stated that “there is a lot of pressure from my boss to eat quickly
and return, it’s like people are noticing if you go fast, and you feel bad for taking the
entire lunch hour”.
When, usually once a week, she manages to go together with one or two colleagues
for lunch at a “nicer restaurant nearby”, she would feel more entitled to make use of
the full hour break. Yet for her, that is barely enough, as she connects also the
pleasure in lunch breaks with what she thinks about productivity:
“Yes, I’d like to stress that I do think about this a lot, having a pleasant lunch hour,
socialising and relaxing. I would work better after lunch if I could have that, and I would

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be happy to not arrive late so I could have more time to lunch. That situation is one of
the factors that don’t motivate me to stay working for this company,”
Portrait 1: Company Sapphire
In attempts to capture the context in which employers compromise decision making
processes in lunch collectively, a two-hour participant observation was done at a
company in Central London. For purposes of anonymity, we renamed the company as
‘Sapphire’. Occupying an entire floor in a bustling office building, Sapphire has an L-
shaped space arrangement, which was generally left open without any particular need
to partition rooms and corners. A communal kitchen is installed in the main junction,
where employees can make coffee and tea or prepare their food. Adjacent to the
kitchen are the multifunctional long benches where people usually utilise to wind down
between tasks, to have semi-formal meetings, and most importantly to have their
lunches. Indeed, some of them pointed the table out as the ‘lunch table’.
Wednesdays are the days for team lunch. The company understands that people work
in different paces, and each have their own preferred time arrangement. It is not
uncommon to have employees who choose to skip lunchtime so they can finish work
earlier; e.g. employees who have kids. In general, as the company has a more relaxed
attitude for its staff to flexibly organise their worktime, the idea is to arrange a day of
the week when people are encouraged to have a simultaneous break and eat together.
It is never a mandatory thing, as we also observed a number of people that chose to
go directly to their desks after preparing their dish in the kitchen.

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In certain occasions, one employee told us, the department would order food in a large
amount for the staff. They hold monthly potlucks as well. However, most of the time
people simply go out to buy their food at nearby cafés and restaurants, or bring their
own lunches. Apparently, by having a strategically placed office with abundant options
for takeaway lunches, what people are having influences others. One person
remarked that it is always easier to ask other people what they are thinking of having,
or at least where they are going to get their lunch. This is also related to the fact that
the meals serve as a conversation starter, e.g. “where did you get that soup?”, or “did
you made that salad yourself?”, etc.
We moved on to talk with six junior employees about commensality in general. The
first thing that they did was to move aside so we could squeeze in between them. The
bench was not big enough to fit every member of the team, so they have to take turns
if they want to eat with other people.
Several points regarding how individuals deal with occasional eating together
emerged from the conversation. One woman told us that it is not necessarily frowned
upon to choose to eat by yourself (outside or at your desk), but in the longer period of
time it may build habits that divide ‘the usual’ with ‘the occasional’ member of the
communal lunch. The limited space, she observed, habitually produced small groups,
or rather ‘conversation pools’ that emerged from the seat arrangement.
Furthermore, although people generally agreed on the benefits in having lunch
together, they also acknowledged the ‘social obligations’ that come with it. In cases
like eating outside, then they would generally spend more money—merrier occasions
often mean more expensive meals. Inside the workplace, when people have shorter
break times than the majority (e.g. having to run for meeting after lunch or working

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behind deadlines), some people would prefer eating by themselves just to save time
from the extended conversations that usually follows. Figure 1 shows a collage the
group made to represent their ideal visualisation of a work lunchtime.
Figure 1: Sapphire's group collage on the ‘ideal lunchtime'
Portrait 2: Company Azure
A group interview was conducted with a group of 3 people that work for a small
company (henceforth renamed ‘Azure’) based in Central London, that has twelve
employees altogether.
The group regarded the fact of not having adequate eating facilities inside the
company as a barrier for them to eat together. In this sense, the group though that the
employees’ wellbeing was not considered much by their employer.
“they used to offer healthy snacks too, it was really nice, because it shows that the
company is taking care of you, that they are giving something in return for the effort
you put in the company.”

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One of them added that she would like to bring food from home to control her diets
while saving money, but does not because of the lack of common place to eat in the
company. Eating on their working desk was not a favourable option either, as they
tend to continue working as a consequence of being there, thus “not having a real
break”.
When asked about the duration of their lunch break, the group went into a lively
discussion that illustrated the tension between those who have experiences working
in large scale companies and those who have not: the two employees who have been
there for longer said, “although they say you have an hour, there is a huge pressure
to finish lunch in a shorter time, so we usually only take half hour lunch”. The employee
who has been in the company for only 8 months was categorical when stating, “I take
my full hour; it’s your legal right, you know?” At that point he left for a cigarette and the
two others remarked, “when you are in a small company, you have to make some
sacrifices, you know? You can’t just go out for an hour. He doesn’t understand it, he
was from Selfridges, you know”.
They were then asked to make a collage about their ideal and worst imaginable
lunchtime at work. In the ideal lunchtime collage (Fig. 2), they included images of, as
per described by them, “healthy and tasty food, outdoors - grass garden or swimming
pool deck- a comfortable place to rest after lunch”, and seating that would enable them
to eat together. In the worst lunchtime collage they included images of an extremely
crowded place, a desk, a prison - explained to be about “the feeling of being locked
up, not free” - and a toilet - explained to be representing bad smell.

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Figure 2: Azure's group collage on the ‘ideal lunchtime'.
Result
A key conclusion that informed further discussion is that the majority of people enjoy
lunchtime spent with their colleagues, but what they want is to socialise in a pleasant
environment. One key theme that arose from our ethnographic studies were the
compromises made between autonomy and degrees of sociality: one set of issues
having an inverse effect on the other. This led us to borrow the concept 'scalable
sociality'. devised by Daniel Miller to describe a major affordance of social media
(Borgerson & Miller 2016), the theory is proven to be a useful concept in describing
how people make decisions regarding commensality. The flexibility in crafting one's
lunchtime extends not only to its physical elements, but also social configurations.
This, we suggest, happens in dialogue with the choice of food, environment, and time
spent eating. Furthermore, the sympathy or antipathy for the company and the

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company culture affects the desire of socialising during work time, thus
the possibility of eating together.
The Cartogram of Commensality
Our study found that worksite lunches are contested territory where personal
preferences negotiate with considerations to accommodate collective needs.
Respondents offered several reasons for how and why they choose to do this: key
issues were time availability, autonomy, cost, convenience, company culture and the
provision of eating spaces and facilities. The idea of Miller's 'scalable sociality' are
implemented in the sailing vessels analogy below. The more sociable the occasion,
i.e. more people included in the group, the less individual preferences weigh as it
demands consensus amongst the group.
To provide prompts to think about the sociality of food in the future, we devised a
visualisation in the form of a cartogram based on the gathered information and our
analysis, which in turn enables us to interpret the data and speculate possible futures
of eating together and wellbeing during lunchtime at work.

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Figure 3: Visuals of the cartogram and the four movable boats.
The islands represent dining locations away from the workplace and feature
characteristics typical of the places that people choose for eating together. Based on
the analysis of our data, those insights are materialised in the islands as 'moods':
• Eden Island is the ideal place for a meal together; verdant yet offering shelter
and comfortable environment. Diners are soothed by natural sounds and scents,
and longer amount of time to indulge in their food. Eden is further away and
more expensive than the other options.
• Quick ‘n’ Cool Cay is a clean, pleasant place to go for a meal, it is relatively
inexpensive, comfortable and not too far from the workplace.

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• Picnic Islet is a pleasant place because of its greenery and is relatively close to
the workplace. However, seating is quite uncomfortable and it is not spacious.
• Sardine Can Islet is the least pleasant choice, crowded with uncomfortable or
even no seating at all, which does not allow employees to relax. The
convenience thus restricted only in regards to time consumption and price.
The boats represent the different social configurations:
The Cruiser can accommodate the whole company, allowing maximum sociality and
minimum individual choice.
The Yacht accommodates a large group of people, achieving a good level of sociality
and modest amount of options.
The Dinghy accommodates 2-4 people, achieving a variety of levels in individual
choice.
The Coracle accommodates a single person; therefore, it allows minimum sociality
yet encourages maximum autonomy.
Our study also found that the company culture, as well as the pleasantness of the
communal environment of it, immensely influences how people eat their lunch. For
that reason, we created three fictitious companies that encompass general
characteristics we identified in companies throughout our research.
Company Turquoise is a large-sized company; there is a fixed lunch hour and
employees are provided with a canteen, not being close to any alternatives it is most
usual for co-workers to eat here.
Company Sapphire is a medium-sized company; lunchtime is flexible and employees
can choose when to take a lunch break and for how long. Sociality is encouraged by

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the provision of a common area with kitchen and dining facilities where employees can
gather and relax. Typically, people bring in packed lunches or food bought from a
nearby outlet.
Company Azure is a small-sized company; it’s culture pressurises staff to eat lunch
as quickly as possible and there is a rudimentary kitchen space but no common dining
facilities. Staff take staggered lunch breaks going out individually or in pairs.
Conclusion
The various demands of living in a fast-paced era has created inevitable
consequences in our lives. People have adapted to living day-to-day in a hurried
manner, adapting to the ever-changing factors that affect society and continuing to
constantly keep up. These elements play into every aspect of our lives, and something
as simple and innate as the act of eating should not be disregarded.
The widespread presence of food-to-go sections in convenience stores and
supermarkets cuts the time we require to think about, process, prepare, and ultimately
eat our food. The close to endless breadth of choices disconnects people from their
food, the producers with their consumers, the supply with the demand, and the cause
with the consequences. What ensues is the abundance of processed food,
unthoughtful production, and ﬁnally, the loss of the social aspects in eating. It
ultimately ends up becoming a trade of our sociality traits for comfort and speed in our
independent lives.
What is interesting about this very society is that it grows exponentially, and also
circulates the means to sustain the infrastructure that supports the habit. In response

24
to this, the continuation of exploring and fully comprehending social changes are
critical in properly addressing the issues and creating solutions. Expanding on Kniffin
et al. (2015), institutional and regulatory involvements from employers and
government may be instrumental in assuring healthy food habits and wellbeing in the
workplace. Governmental supports may come in the form of regulations in work
environment, implementations in nutritional and health recommendations, and policy
regarding worksite eating (cf. Jørgensen et al. 2010). Accordingly, encouragement for
partnership in public and private stakeholders, for instance between trade unions and
ministries, is necessary.
The Cartogram is intended to highlight issues regarding eating together in the
working environment, we hope that our study can contribute something to the
understanding of current attitudes towards shared eating and offer an indication of
some important parameters to take into consideration when looking at ways that
workplace sociality and wellbeing could be enhanced.

25
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Appendix – Group Collages
Azure’s group collage on the least ideal lunchtime
Sapphire's group collage on the least ideal lunchtime

Nesta Study Report-Sep 29

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