19 juin 2024
Simon Vonthron et al., « How people navigate the foodscape? Analyzing the diversity of households’ food procurement practices », HAL-SHS : géographie, ID : 10670/1.7mempr
Although the food environment is thought to affect food behaviors, studies’ results are inconsistent (Dixon et al. 2021). Beyond the heterogeneity of the methods used (Bivoltsis et al. 2018), different studies underline the importance of individuals' perception of their food environment on their practices (i.e. MacNell et al. 2017; Gravina et al. 2020). It is necessary to look beyond the causal analysis of the relationships between the spatial distribution of food outlets and individual food practices. We need to study how people navigate their food environment, thus moving to a foodscape approach (Vonthron et al. 2020).In this study, we investigated how people organize themselves practically, in time and space, to procure food. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 households in the Montpellier-city region, France. We then analyzed their food procurement practices, the reasons and the meaning they give for their choices and their practices.We identified eight patterns of food procurement logics (i.e. coherent combinations of choices and practices), that we labelled: budgetary, efficient, avoidance, relational, physical accessibility, recreational, product, and committed. The terms and arguments used in the budgetary, efficient and avoidance logics highlight a "constrained" foodscape, due respectively to the budget, the time, and the sensitive relationships with others implied by this social activity of "shopping". Conversely, the terms and arguments used in the relational and recreational logics reflect a "chosen" foodscape associated with the satisfaction people gain from these practices. The logic of physical accessibility leads to discourses that oscillate between constraint and opportunity. Finally, in the case of product and committed logics, respondents' discourses depend on the characteristics of the products sold, the shops or the shopkeepers, whatever the landscape associated with the places concerned. Our results thus suggest that the relationships between foodscapes and procurement practices differ according to diverse combinations of such logics. These results contribute to explain why even when public actions strongly impact food environments, households’ food procurement practices do not necessarily change, as they are part of routines (Castelo et al. 2021) and respond to diversified logics. Thus, a policy aiming at opening new food outlets in neighborhoods must take into account the households’ logics. It is on the basis of this knowledge that a process of co-design of projects aimed at changing foodscapes should be initiated, if public stakeholders want to have a concrete impact on inequalities of access to healthy food.Bivoltsis, A., E. Cervigni, G. Trapp, M. Knuiman, P. Hooper, and G. L. Ambrosini. 2018. Food environments and dietary intakes among adults: does the type of spatial exposure measurement matter? A systematic review. International Journal of Health Geographics 17(1): 19. doi: 10.1186/s12942-018-0139-7.Castelo, A. F. M., M. Schäfer, and M. E. Silva. 2021. Food practices as part of daily routines: A conceptual framework for analysing networks of practices. Appetite 157: 104978. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2020.104978.Dixon, B. N., U. A. Ugwoaba, A. N. Brockmann, and K. M. Ross. 2021. Associations between the built environment and dietary intake, physical activity, and obesity: A scoping review of reviews. Obesity Reviews 22(4): e13171. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.13171.Gravina, L., A. Jauregi, A. Estebanez, I. Fernández-Aedo, N. Guenaga, S. Ballesteros-Peña, J. Díez, and M. Franco. 2020. Residents’ perceptions of their local food environment in socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods: A photovoice study. Appetite 147. Scopus. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2019.104543.MacNell, L., S. Elliott, A. Hardison-Moody, and S. Bowen. 2017. Black and Latino Urban Food Desert Residents’ Perceptions of Their Food Environment and Factors That Influence Food Shopping Decisions. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition 12(3): 375–393. doi: 10.1080/19320248.2017.1284025.Vonthron, S., C. Perrin, and C.-T. Soulard. 2020. Foodscape: A scoping review and a research agenda for food security-related studies. PLOS ONE 15(5). Public Library of Science: e0233218. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233218.