How is COVID-19 shaping families' relationships with food and food environments? A longitudinal qualitative study

Introduction: COVID-19 has radically changed life in the UK, reshaping work and social lives and altering relationships with built environments, including food environments. Neither the pandemic itself, nor its impacts have been felt equally, with ethnic minority groups, those on low and/or insecure incomes, and those in occupations that preclude social distancing experiencing the most negative outcomes. Change on this scale has significant potential to disrupt practices, including food and dietary practices. This may have significant implications in terms of obesity and people's nutrition. To understand how changing food practices might impact long-term nutritional health and how different groups of people might respond to policies and actions designed to improve diets, it is necessary to understand how COVID-19 is shaping engagement with food and food environments. Methods: We initiated a remote longitudinal qualitative study engaging 62 parents of school or nursery aged children across three case study sites in England. Participants were recruited so as to represent the demographics of each study site (e.g., in terms of SES and ethnicity) and comprise a range of family structures (e.g., single parent households, families with different caring responsibilities). Methods informed by ethnographic and participatory approaches were adapted to be appropriate in a remote setting. These comprised: semi-structured interviews, photo-elicitation, participatory mapping, and oral diaries. Participants engage with these methods three times over a year, with the first phase of research taking place between October and Dec 2020. Results: Findings from phase one of the study demonstrate that COVID- 19 and its impacts necessitated a reorganisation of daily routines and food practices, an adjustment of existing food practices, and/or an establishment of new ones. Households' ability to make these changes and engage in practices beneficial for both nutrition and wellbeing was dictated by the availability of resources such as finances, time, and social support systems, often shifting with changing lockdown restrictions. Beyond these material constraints, changes to diet perceived as negative also came about through food's emerging role as one of life's allowed pleasures and the gendered division of care work and stress associated with this burden. Conclusion: Efforts to shape nutrition and prevent obesity in the aftermath of the pandemic must take into account the various constraints that shape food provision practices and engagement with the food environment.