Between the school meal and the feed:Iconophagy, food, and the formation of the gaze during the school break

Abstract

Abstract
The article proposes a reflection on school feeding as a formative experience in the context of contemporary digital culture, articulating the fields of education, communication studies, and philosophy. It is based on the observation that, beyond its nutritional function, school meals are part of everyday practices imbued with symbolic, relational, and educational meanings. In the current scenario, marked by the intensification of image consumption mediated by mobile devices, the act of eating is traversed by new regimes of visibility and attention. Grounded in the concept of iconophagy, developed by Norval Baitello Jr., the article analyzes how image consumption during school breaks interferes with the experience of eating and with the processes of gaze formation among high school students. Adopting a qualitative, theoretical‑interpretative approach, the discussion articulates contributions from the philosophy of education, psychology, and communication studies with empirical observations conducted during a supervised Philosophy teaching internship in a public school. It is argued that, between the meal and the feed, unintentional learning processes emerge that reconfigure students’ relationships with the body, time, and sensory experience, posing new challenges for understanding school feeding as a formative practice within digital culture.