Nurturing transformative food environment literacy with participatory research

Purpose The food environment has received increasing attention in research and policy. It can be defined as the interface in which people interact with food systems. Despite growing interest, we still know too little about how citizens understand and exercise agency in their food environments. A better picture of lived experience is needed for identifying, designing, implementing, and evaluating interventions to deliver better diets for all. This paper examines how participatory research can nurture transformative food environment literacy, understood as the capacity to critically reflect on how food environments shape food choices and to collectively engage in their transformation. Design/methodology/approach The study draws on a Photovoice process conducted with Finnish youth. Participants documented their everyday food environments through photography, engaged in collective reflection on their experiences, and collaborated with food environment actors to identify potential solutions to problems they had identified. The analysis focuses on how methodological choices throughout the process created conditions for food environment literacy. Findings According to the results, participatory research can support transformative literacy if it is intentionally designed to do so. Transformative food environment literacy benefits from collective deliberation but requires long-term institutional engagement to utilize the co-created knowledge. Originality/value The paper introduces the concept of transformative food environment literacy and examines how participatory research can create conditions for its development. The study extends existing food literacy research beyond individual competencies and highlights the importance of reflection, collective learning, and long-term institutional engagement in food environment transformation.