Terceira idade e consumo: experiência de consumo alimentar da classe C

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate how the C class elderly consumers live their diet experiences. Through a qualitative and ethnographic methodology, it sought to understand how a senior citizens group builds consumption meanings within their own view of the world. The contents analysis of the interviews provided a group of relevant findings for a better understanding of the role of the diet in the several daily life situations lived by the elderly consumers which contribute to the construction of meanings in the experience of diet consumption. The transformations which occur in our society reflect in all other aspects of the life of the individual, including in their relation with the consumer´s universe. The categories were constituted by deductive and intuitive methods. In the deductive method, they were known beforehand. Therefore, they were a priori categories, such as: nostalgia, family, new habits, abundance and routine. With the inductive method, the categories emerged from the development of the field work, for at each moment, the walk changes and a movement of data is created, which allowed some categories, such as celebration, habitus, religiousness, and going out and meeting people. The diet is part of the life of the researched consumers in the most expected and common situations of the daily life as a means of fun, information source, health, family and friendships, discipline, and sadness. Considering the relevance of the diet as expression of personal identity, it takes up a symbolic value in the life of the elderly. It is expected that the results of this research may contribute to the filling in of the blanks of knowledge both in regards to literature concerning the experiences with diet consumption and to the characteristics of the third age.