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The practices of eating together can be distinguished according to the degree of constraint they represent for individuals, and according to the centrality of food during the shared meal. We thus identify eating together on a day-to-day basis, with the members of the household, but which can be experienced as a constraint or as a source of frustration.

 – She is absorbed by her video games, so it is very difficult to have habits, to stick to my eating habits and to impose them on my child because she is the child of divorce, there are habits that she has at her father’s house and those she doesn’t… that I find difficult afterwards when she comes back here to make her break the habit.

 – But when she’s here, do you eat at the table?

 – Well, I eat by myself, so that’s during the week when she goes to school, and on weekends we eat at the table (Amélie).

In this type of practice, consumers try to maintain eating together, either to follow nutritional recommendations or because (like Amélie) they see it as an opportunity to share a moment with their loved ones. For others, eating together on a day-to-day basis with household members can be synonymous with shared pleasure on a daily basis. In this case, it is generally a spontaneous and pleasant practice:

It is also when we eat almost directly after we’ve arrived home from work, we cook and sit at the table, so it is still the time when we tell each other about our day, we are both a little quiet and we do not want to be disturbed by our phones (Marie).

In a more festive setting, eating together can be experienced as a way to get together with friends/family for special events (birthdays, reunions), but without this moment being centered on the food or on the cooking and esthetics of the meal:

 – If someone comes to eat at your house, what do you do?

 – Well it’s… I have to force myself to anticipate I know that so-and-so is eating here so what am I going to prepare for them… and often I’ll make them the simplest things possible because I hate elaborate dishes, so often it’s going to be risotto with a salad as a starter.

 – OK, so in fact when people come here it’s just to have a good time, but eating together is incidental because you have to eat?

 – Exactly (Sabrina).

On the other hand, in other cases, eating together allows friends and family to get together, but the food is central. Thus, the experience of being together sometimes begins even before the meal (guests come to cook):

The last time we had a Mexican night, so we made fajitas and stuff, the other night we spent three hours making sushi, everyone with their own thing [laughs], so yeah, it’s not bad, it’s true that we cook a lot with our friends too, it’s great (Camille).

In these types of practices, the esthetics and content of the meal are central.

Based on these findings, the remainder of this chapter offers an analysis, in the form of a discussion, of the conditions for the emergence of eating together practices. This analysis is conducted in light of Shove et al.’s (2012) framework of practice theories, described above.