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Based on a mixed methods approach, this article describes the prevalence of different levels of food budget restraints in a sample of 1,650 Danish households, and explores different types of coping strategies to deal with such restraints. Strategies concerned cooking, eating and buying food. A deeper knowledge of coping strategies was obtained by analysing qualitative data from interviews with thirty families who have experienced food budget restraints. Results revealed that more than 40 per cent reported some level of restraint on their food budget, while about 20 per cent experienced more substantial food budget restraints or food insecurity. Single parent households were at significantly greater risk of experiencing restraint than others. An investigation of coping strategies showed that some strategies, for example, using leftovers and cooking seasonal products, were common across all levels of budget restraint, while strategies affecting social life and taste preferences negatively were mostly applied when restraint was more severe. The qualitative analysis explored how the various strategies involved the potential for both positive and negative experiences for the individual, depending on the wider context surrounding the need to reduce household food budgets. Results from this study may be important for developing adequate measures to influence food purchases and eating practices in specific groups in situations of widespread economic turbulence in welfare societies.

In the new European food policy following the BSE crisis, the consumer is called upon to take an active and responsible role. But in the political and organizational restructuring processes following the European Union policy, diverse constructions of the food consumer can be identified in different national contexts. The article analyses the discursive framings of the food consumer in four national settings: Norway, Denmark, Italy and Portugal, based on interview data from a comparative research project, TRUSTINFOOD. The main discursive framings that in each national context were shared by all types of actors in the food sector were: `the trusting consumer' (Norway); `the complex consumer' (Denmark); `the quality conscious consumer' (Italy); and `the unprotected consumer' (Portugal). These consensual constructions tie in with national survey results illuminating consumers, self-understandings of individual agency and acting. But consumer responsibilities for food issues also fuel conflictual representations, in the northern countries between different food issues and in the southern countries between different types of actors. Both consensual and main and conflicting framings relate to national organizational institutionalizations in the food sector. It is concluded that references to the European consumer are misleading.