INTRO UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT LISTENING TO PEOPLE OBSERVING FOODSCAPES
CRAFTING INSIGHTS DESIGNING INTERVENTIONS
After using these methods, reflect on what surprised you, what affirmed a prior assumption, what highlighted a dark spot in your knowledge, and what you want to share about your initial foodscapes research.
How might you use this initial data to make the case for a more comprehensive Foodscape Assessment and foodscape interventions in your city?
Crafting insights
METHODS IN THIS SECTION
→ Form initial insights
→ Outline core challenges
Form initial insights
Even though you are just testing select methods from the Foodscape Methodology, you may already be able to develop initial insights. These might be confirming a hunch you had from the outset or could involve new knowledge gained during the process.
Return to your original purpose statement and research question(s) and reflect on what you learned. The downloadable worksheet 'Early Reflections' may help.
Worksheet
A set of prompt questions that will help you begin to draw connections between observations about food offerings in the neighbourhood, cultural norms, the built environment, social patterns, and the everyday experience of locals.
Estimated time: 1-2 hours
Outline core challenges
After collecting observations and insights from your foodscapes research, the next step is to identify the key challenges shaping how people access, experience, and make decisions about food in everyday life.
Foodscapes challenges are often interconnected. They may relate to:
The built environment
Mobility and time constraints
Food visibility and marketing
Social and cultural norms
Safety and comfort
Broader economic and systemic barriers
The goal at this stage is not to identify every issue, but to pinpoint the challenges that are most influential in shaping daily food behaviours in your context.
Try to move beyond broad statements like “people do not eat healthy food” and identify the underlying drivers behind those behaviours. For example:
Time constraints and mobility barriers limit people’s ability to seek out healthy food options, increasing reliance on convenient but less healthy alternatives.
Local vendors offering fresh and healthy food are struggling to compete with larger retailers and fast food environments that benefit from greater visibility, convenience, and marketing power.
The neighborhoods lacks welcoming social spaces that support shared meals, healthy eating, and community connection around food.
Limited familiarity, knowledge, and confidence around healthy foods makes it difficult for people to incorporate them into daily life.
A strong challenge statement is grounded in observed behaviours and lived experience data, connects food behaviours to environmental conditions, and points toward opportunities for intervention.
Use the worksheet "Theory of Change: Step 1 (Challenges)" to articulate the core challenge(s) and sub challenge(s). You can refer to the reference guide "Common Foodscapes Challenges" for inspiration.
Reference Guide
A set of common foodscapes challenges that many cities encounter. This resource may spark ideas about which foodscapes challenges are present in your city that could benefit from a foodscapes intervention.
Estimated time: 5 minutes
Worksheet
Theory of Change: Step 1 (Challenges)
An Issue Tree is a way of structuring a problem so it can be tackled logically. This template will help you break down large or complex problems related to healthy diets into separate sub-components. This will help you ideate interventions to effectively tackle the challenge in the next step.
Estimated time: 1 hour