Start Date
1-6-2022 10:15 AM
End Date
1-6-2022 10:30 AM
Description
Team dinners persist as an enduring tradition merging sport and food. Encompassing sportsmanship, superstition, and sometimes even classically trained chefs, team dinners are enjoyed by youth and professional athletes alike worldwide. However, the role and impacts of such rituals remain poorly understood. This paper contends that team dinners represent a unique gastronomic phenomenon that has lasting effects beyond sport. Given that sport and food are often both culturally entrenched and emotionally bound, team dinners are likely influential in molding adolescence athletes’ notions of nutrition, food choice, and acceptable dining behaviors. In the U.S., pre- and post-game dinners are used as a means of recruiting student-athletes to elite collegiate teams and some programs have even constructed facilities dedicated to the procurement, production, and distribution of meals to athletes in turn shaping supply-lines and campus skylines and introducing students to elevated food experiences likely not had before. At the professional level, some of the most decorated athletes adhere to pre-game meal superstitions, while others use the meals to tout their status. In short, team dinners are seemingly significant to both sport and food in a myriad of ways. Thus, they deserve further academic consideration and offers avenues for future scholarly exploration.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/sxjd-4g03
Team Dinners: Considering Trends, Traditions, and Impacts beyond Sport
Team dinners persist as an enduring tradition merging sport and food. Encompassing sportsmanship, superstition, and sometimes even classically trained chefs, team dinners are enjoyed by youth and professional athletes alike worldwide. However, the role and impacts of such rituals remain poorly understood. This paper contends that team dinners represent a unique gastronomic phenomenon that has lasting effects beyond sport. Given that sport and food are often both culturally entrenched and emotionally bound, team dinners are likely influential in molding adolescence athletes’ notions of nutrition, food choice, and acceptable dining behaviors. In the U.S., pre- and post-game dinners are used as a means of recruiting student-athletes to elite collegiate teams and some programs have even constructed facilities dedicated to the procurement, production, and distribution of meals to athletes in turn shaping supply-lines and campus skylines and introducing students to elevated food experiences likely not had before. At the professional level, some of the most decorated athletes adhere to pre-game meal superstitions, while others use the meals to tout their status. In short, team dinners are seemingly significant to both sport and food in a myriad of ways. Thus, they deserve further academic consideration and offers avenues for future scholarly exploration.