Youth & Food in Transition – Exploring adolescents’ dietary behaviours for a healthy and sustainable future

Summary

Adopting diets that support both public and planetary health is increasingly important, and adolescence is a key stage for developing such dietary behaviours. Schools, as settings that reach a wide and diverse group of adolescents, can play an important role in this transition. This thesis explored how adolescents can best be supported and empowered to adopt healthy and sustainable dietary behaviours, by means of the school context. Through mixed-methods studies with professionals and adolescents, we explored the factors that shape adolescents’ dietary behaviours, what is currently done in school food interventions, and adolescents’ ideas for what needs to be done. The findings highlight the importance of autonomy, social influences around food, and food availability in and around school. Currently, existing school food interventions often focus on either health or sustainability, and are mainly centred around increasing knowledge. In contrast, adolescents themselves propose more structural changes in the food environment or the food system, such as affordable healthy food options or more sustainable food production. Overall, this thesis underscores the need for creating healthy and sustainable (school) food environments, which provide affordable options, are socially engaging, and are attuned to adolescents’ diverse lived realities. Engaging adolescents in co-creating such transitions, together with professionals, can help bridge the current gaps and align future interventions with adolescents’ diverse contexts.