"Traditional research on food environments has mostly focused on physical spaces such as supermarkets, schools, and restaurants, paying less attention to digital spaces and to the digitalization of physical spaces", Sabrina tells inn.no.
She has done just that; her study maps out how digitalization is affecting our food environment.
This was achieved by developing the concept of digital food environments, as well as providing a theoretical framework that explains how they work. All of this is based on interviews with young women between the ages of 18 and 24 in Norway, and an extensive review of existing research data.
The study shows that digitalization affects food practices to varying degrees, but that digital technology is closely integrated into women's daily food practices.
"Some practices remain analogue, such as food preparation, while others are transformed by digital tools, like when we search for recipes on social media or buy food through meal delivery apps. In some cases, food-related decisions are almost fully delegated to technology: when using AI to decide a meal plan, or when algorithms recommend food content in digital media platforms", she says.
At the same time, young women described pressure related to body image and unrealistic expectations created by social media food content.
"They also reported being exposed to digital marketing of unhealthy foods, and difficulty distinguishing reliable nutrition information from misinformation", says Sabrina Ionata de Oliveira Granheim.
The digital food environment in which people live and otherwise spend their time shapes what they do about food and how. People have agency to make food choices, but these choices are either facilitated or made more difficult depending on the wider context of the digital food environment, where social, commercial and political forces are at play.
"Power dynamics are exacerbated by the fact that powerful commercial entities from both the technology and food sectors are part of the digital food environment. Digitalization has the potential to support healthier diets, as long as policies are enacted prioritizing public health goals over commercial or technological ones", she says.
Sabrina Ionata de Oliveira Granheim's thesis is titled "A Grounded Theory of the Digital Food Environment" . She has been affiliated with the PhD programme Health and Welfare at INN University.
The main findings of the PhD thesis:
- Digital technology is now a central part of everyday food practices, influencing how people search for information, choose food, buy groceries, order meals, see food ads, and understand health and nutrition.
- The thesis developed the concept of the digital food environment as an augmented space where social and material food practices take place, mediated, enhanced, enabled, or replaced by digital technology, influencing food consumption and impacting nutrition, health, and equity.
- The study proposes that food practices are digitalized to different degrees, including:
- Analogue food practices, such as preparing and consuming food.
- Digitally enhanced food practices, in which digital technology fundamentally changes the experience by adding transformative features. For example, meal delivery apps are not a neutral mediator in the food purchase transaction, they have features such as push notifications, discounts, and user interfaces that are designed to promote and increase the frequency of purchase, shaping the types of meals purchased towards energy dense foods of low nutritional value. Other examples in this category include online food retail and digital ordering kiosks in physical restaurants.
- Digitally replaced food practices, where digital technology displaces human transactions in the digital food environment, as human choices and activities are outsourced to non‐human agents. The growing adoption of AI illustrates this, for instance, in AI analysis of consumer behaviour for autonomous targeting of digital food advertisement, or the increasing use of generative AI (ChatGPT and others) for personalized nutritional advice.
- People do not experience digital food environments equally. Technology access, digital skills, social position, and age are among the factors that influence unequal access to healthy digital food environments and shape who benefits and who is made more vulnerable.
- Because digital food environments are structural forces that shape food practices, including food preferences, routines, and understandings of what is easy or desirable to eat, this challenges the idea that food choice is mainly an individual responsibility.
- People have agency, and this was apparent for instance when young women used active strategies to protect their autonomy in digital food environments, such as choosing who to follow on social media, unfollowing food and fitness influencers, and blocking content that negatively affected their eating practices or body image. Over time, many became more aware of how algorithms and social media content influenced them, and responded by curating their feeds to seek positive inspiration and avoid harmful comparison, pressure, or misinformation. This shows how some of them made it possible to regain at least partial control over their food practices and reduce unwanted digital influence.
- Still, their choices are strongly influenced by social, commercial, political and digital structures, including digital food marketing and social media algorithms, which are driven by actors whose primary interest is maximizing profit, not health.
- Digitalization has the potential to support healthier diets, for example through access to information, food inspiration, easier food planning, or easier food access to remote markets. However, for that to be the case, we need strong policies aiming to ensure that technological advancements serve public health and equity objectives, to avoid widening existing social inequalities and undermining healthy food practices.