Eating out-eating in: How food apps have changed family bonds in urban India

In recent years, food – a basic human need – has become more publicly visible than ever before.

There are food columns in newspapers and magazines and entire television channels dedicated to cooking. Images, recipes and food stories proliferate across social media platforms.

There are discussions about organic food, plant-based foods, vegan foods, protests by farmers, advice by dieticians and diet charts by nutritionists, recipes by celebrity chefs, food competitions, health foods, natural foods, food technologies and food service.

Since the liberalisation of India’s economy in the 1990s, eating out has been normalised by a small slice of metropolitan India – single people, young working couples and upper-middle-class nuclear families. But now, fundamental changes that run contrary to the practice of eating out can be detected in the domestic kitchens of people belonging to these groups.

Their kitchens are becoming smaller, underutilised and functionally diminished. The table has assumed an industrial character: served meals are ordered-in; crockery and cutlery are either replaced or supplemented by food packages and disposable ware: plates, spoons and glasses. Even meals eaten at festivals are a mix of ordered-in and home-cooked dishes.

At the table, laptops and smart phones are used actively. Face-to-face conversation is replaced by virtual interactions.

As a sociologist who has worked on the...

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