Objective:

To analyse food practices deployed by popular leaders of community kitchens in Argentina during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Methodology:

The approach is qualitative, and the selection of the subjects incorporated into the study followed the criteria of purposive sampling. Sixty-three in-depth interviews in Gran La Plata (Buenos Aires).

Results:

In the results we can describes the entanglement of economic and organizational resources, local knowledge, cooking and feeding habits, etc., which were activated facing the food emergency. It shows that feeding in popular neighbourhoods during the pandemic has been a complex, diverse, collective practice, as the same time is also territorially inscribed, which keeps it from any homogenizing claim.

Limitations:

The health emergency and the measures that restricted the circulation of people, limited the possibility of complementing the analysis of discursively reconstructed food practices with direct observation in the field.

Conclusions:

In this part, the position of popular leaders in community kitchens was not only to intermediate between state/civil food assistance and household needs, but they were part of neighbourhood organisation and leadership, they dialogued with local cultures and were able to question native "tastes". For all this, their performance was considered effective, covering food needs as well as providing social and emotional support for households facing uncertainty.

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