Meal mutability: understanding how variations in meal concepts and recipe flexibility relate to food provisioning

This short communication introduces the meal mutability concept. This concept aims to describe how recipes and the ideal meals they refer to are flexibly interpreted and enacted as cooked dishes by consumers in practice. This flexibility may be linked to relations between provisioning and cooking in households, among other things. These features are explored using qualitative data originally analysed as part of a project focussing on quantitative modelling of household food and packaging waste. Meal mutability is intended to assist the development of modelling of the environmental consequences of particular foods and cooking methods.