Abstract Summary
The unfolding lives of the current youth generation will both track and influence how food consumption evolves into the future. As youth have a considerable stake in the course of food system transformations there is a growing call to pay more attention to their engagements with food environments. Particularly in low- and-middle-income countries, young people represent a large part of the population, and they grow up in increasingly globalized, modernized, urbanized, and economically developed contexts. Such developments may shape their normal ways of eating, preparing, and shopping for food in their everyday lives and challenge established practices ingrained in older generations. Understanding how these practices evolve and shift during the dynamic youth life phase is imperative for comprehending the potential trajectories and forms that food consumption might assume and their implications for health and sustainability. This research explores what (un)sustainable food practices exist among youth and how these are formed in dynamically changing urban and peri-urban contexts of Hanoi, Vietnam. The study takes an intergenerational social practice approach, employing a mix of qualitative methods. To capture youth food practices within households as well as outside the home, and their relationship with changing social environments, dyadic interviews with youth (13-24) and their mothers are complemented with individual interviews with adolescents and young adults, and food vendors catering to this group. These talk-based methods are combined with participant observations and photo-journaling. This presentation will discuss preliminary results and reflect on what a youth generational perspective can offer to inform transformations towards healthy and sustainable urban food systems. Acknowledgement: This research is part of the Sustainable Healthy Diets through Food Systems Transformation (SHiFT) CGIAR research initiative.
