Southampton's Institute for Life Science (IfLS) researchers have taken an immersive, look into the everyday lives of adolescents and their families in Soweto.
The project called Mind, Food, Space combines wearable monitoring, detailed dietary assessment, powerful visual storytelling, and household food and spending inventories, to make daily realities visible and measurable.
The research findings are already having an impact by:
- helping families ‘see’ their eating patterns
- creating a complete picture of food habits to identify realistic intervention points
- shaping credible, human-centred policy and programme design
- highlighting the prevalence of anxiety symptoms in young adolescents
Revealing the whole picture
Soweto, south-west of Johannesburg, in South Africa, and many similar urban-poor settings, are facing a collision of challenges. These include food insecurity alongside rising obesity, and mental health stressors all in the context of constrained environments for healthy living.
Until now, conventional research has relied on a single interview or clinic visit and this can miss the texture of lived experience.
Mind, Food, Space, is a Southampton project led by Professor Shane Norris, lead for the IfLS Global Health theme, and Professor Mary Barker, IfLS Deputy Director and lead for the IfLS Adolescent Health theme.
It was designed to spend time getting closer to families, documenting their a week in their lives, and understanding what young people and the members of their households eat and do, as well as why, how and under what constraints.
The study focuses on the question ‘What does adolescent nutrition and health really look like, day-to-day, inside households navigating food insecurity and an intense ultra-processed food environment?’
Mind, Food, Space aims to build a high-resolution picture of adolescent health in an urban-poor setting.
Conducting the research
Mind, Food, Space followed adolescent boys and girls and their families through a week in their ordinary lives. The study involved 2 groups – those living with obesity and those at a healthy weight.
Over the course of 10 days, the research team worked with households to capture what young people and their families bought, did and felt. It also recorded their shared and differing experiences.
The team gathered the views of the whole household, including the adults in the home who contributed diaries and expenditure information.
The team also:
- assessed adolescent mental health, such as symptoms of anxiety and depression, and wellbeing through surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews with young people and family members
- measured physical activity, sedentary time, and sleep using monitoring devices
- documented dietary practices via detailed daily 24-hour dietary recalls
- captured all foods purchased during the study week
- conducted a household food inventory at the start of the week
- collected diaries from all adult household members and recorded weekly food expenditure
- used the internationally recognised ‘What the World Eats’ approach to quantify household food patterns, then re-created the household’s weekly food basket and photographed it using standardised methods
Shane explained: “Adolescent health isn’t just biology or willpower, it’s stress, food choices, safety, time, family routines, and what’s actually available in the home. Mind, Food, Space was designed to document that reality and tell the story in a way we, as scientists, communities and decision-makers, can see.”
“The study offers a high-resolution picture of how mind, food and place interact in real life and how that is shaping responses. This approach doesn’t blame individuals for ‘choices’. Instead it documents the systems around them which determine affordability, food environments, time poverty, safety, stress, and access to spaces for activity and rest.”
Making a difference
Mind, Food, Space was supported through a grant from the South African National Research Foundation and generated evidence that was both scientifically rigorous and immediately relatable. The evidence can be used by communities, policymakers, and researchers to see where the pressure points are and what solutions might fit real life.
Families have had the opportunity to reflect on visual ‘food portraits’ of their weekly consumption.
Shane said: “Families can literally see their consumption patterns, often for the first time. By showing these photographic images to the households, we sparked deeper conversations about constraints, trade-offs, and habits in a way that questionnaires rarely achieve.”
When we saw the photo of everything we bought for the week, it shocked us. It’s not that we don’t know what’s healthy, but sometimes it’s what we can afford, what’s quick, and what keeps everyone full.
A participating parent
The project also produced an unusually rich data that is well-positioned to identify realistic intervention points such as what could change, for whom, and what barriers need to be addressed first.
If we want to improve adolescent health, we have to stop asking only ‘What did you eat?’ and start asking ‘What made that the realistic option this week?’. Mind, Food, Space documents the pressures shaping choices including stress, food insecurity, school and family routines, and what’s actually in the home.
