“Two quid, chicken and chips, done”: understanding what makes for young people’s sense of living well in the city through the lens of fast food consumption

ABSTRACT

Fast food seems unequivocally at odds with any moves towards more sustainable food consumption. It is identified as a major contributor to obesity, health inequalities, and to environmental impacts through its production and distribution. However, this problematisation of fast food ignores its contribution to understandings of “living well”, particularly for young people. This paper draws on data from an international project which explores how young people understand what makes for living well in cities. We focus on research with young people in Lambeth, London, exploring the role of food – specifically fast food practices – in their constructions of living well. Drawing on focus group interviews and photo diaries with young people aged 12–24, we highlight the enthusiasm inherent in discussions of fast food whereby it is constructed as easily accessible, inexpensive and attractive, whilst affording young people a degree of autonomy and agency. Fast food outlets are regarded as friendly, convenient, and safe social spaces, in a context where austerity cuts have reduced access to spaces specifically for young people. Further, consumption of fast food facilitates and legitimises young people’s use of local streets and green spaces. Thus practices of fast food consumption might be understood to contribute to the ability to “live well” from the perspective of young residents. Making fast food less accessible to young people may be part of obesity and sustainable food strategies, but a broader wellbeing strategy is needed which is informed by understanding the valued social practices fast food currently affords young people.

KEYWORDS:

• Fast food
• young people
• sustainability
• consumption
• living well

1. Introduction

Sustainability is increasingly understood as the capability to live well or achieve a “good life” within environmental limits – a framing which gives equal standing to its social and environmental dimensions. Living well may be interpreted objectively, but understandings are also socially and culturally shaped. This is particularly relevant in relation to food consumption which has fundamental nutritional implications for wellbeing, but also significant social meaning. This paper explores how young people understand what makes for living well in cities, through a focus on their discussions of fast food. We begin by briefly contextualising our interest in understandings of “living well” and the importance of considering young people’s own evaluations of this, before indicating how this intersects with debates about fast food.

1.1 Sustainability and “living well”

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development describes itself as providing “a global blueprint for dignity, peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and in the future” (UN 2021). Conventional indicators of prosperity which prioritise economic growth, however, threaten the environmental conditions on which any broader understanding of prosperity as quality of life depend (Jackson 2017). New understandings are needed which enable the possibility of “living well” within environmental limits (Moore and Woodcraft 2019).

An interest in understandings of living well is informed by longstanding research on wellbeing (Stoll 2014) which is usually understood to be multi-dimensional encompassing “both subjective feelings and experiences as well as … living conditions” ( Ben-Arieh 2016). Relational and contextual aspects are often highlighted, with an individual’s ability to live well understood to be intertwined with the experiences of those around them and their social and physical environments (Jackson 2017). Not only are experiences of living well shaped by aspects of context, but people’s ideas and understandings of what makes for a good life are socially shaped, varying over place and time (Fattore, Fegter, and Hunner-Kreisel 2019). Moore and Woodcraft point to the particular need for research which explores how prosperity or living well “is conceptualised differently across places, cultures and generations” (2019, 277).

Young people are likely to view, experience and value the spaces and services of the city differently from adults (Matthews and Limb 1999), thus understanding their perspectives on what makes for living well in cities is essential for inclusive urban sustainability strategies. However, children and young peoples’ voices are largely omitted from urban planning and sustainable consumption policies and strategies aimed at shaping where and how they live (Wilks and Rudner 2013; Collins and Hitchings 2012). When young people are consulted, their views are often only sought on aspects which are perceived by adults as pertinent to them, such as parks and playgrounds, and they are not regarded as having sufficient competency to voice opinions on other urban planning topics (Flouri, Midouhas, and Joshi 2014). Young people’s local everyday spaces of food and eating events – their “foodscapes” (Brembeck and Johansson 2010) play a key role in their health, leisure and social lives. Thus, understanding their perspectives on these is a key component of any work which seeks to contribute to inclusive understandings of living well in cities.

1.2 Healthy and sustainable food – and the problem of fast food

There is widespread acknowledgement that reformulating food systems is key in helping cities tackle social and environmental challenges and that an approach that is both health and sustainability focused is beneficial to urban residents in a number of ways (Marsden and Sonnino 2012; Fanzo 2019; UN 2015). Equal access to affordable, healthy and sustainably produced food is paramount to social justice, especially in cities like London where inequalities are intensified by race, class and ethnicity (Agyeman et al. 2016; Heynen, Kurtz, and Trauger 2012). London’s strategy for “Healthy and Sustainable Food” recognises this:

Food is … a key part of my social fairness and economic equality agenda as it affects the health, happiness and prosperity of us all. I want every Londoner to have access to healthy, affordable, good food - regardless of where they live, their personal circumstances or income. (GLA 2019)

While the London Food Strategy is explicitly committed to the concept of distributional justice (healthy affordable food for all), commitment to procedural justice (ensuring fair and inclusive participation in decision making) is less apparent. Inclusive decision making is essential for planning sustainable food systems, with children’s and young people’s perspectives on what constitutes “good” food being an important component (Derr et al. 2013).

Fast food take aways¹ are often cast as the antithesis of “good” food in cities, both in terms of their environmental and health impacts. At a global level, the carbon footprint and freshwater impacts of the meat and dairy supply chains of the largest fast food chains are highlighted (McGrath 2019), while within neighbourhoods concerns often focus on issues of food and packaging waste. Targeting the global chains is one thing, but fast food outlets are mostly small or medium sized enterprises known to be less likely than other forms of food retailers to engage with, and be monitored for, sustainable practices (Shokri, Oglethorpe, and Nabhani 2014). In addition, fast food outlet owners are more likely to lack knowledge on what constitutes sustainable approaches to food procurement, retail and waste (Schroeder and McEachern 2005).

Alongside environmental impacts, the public health impacts of fast food consumption are a major sustainability concern. The expansion of the fast food industry in urban settings has contributed to the increasing normalisation and routinisation of fast food consumption in the everyday lives of young people in cities (Freund and Martin 2008; Stead et al. 2011). Public health research has identified a link between the density of fast food outlets and the prevalence and rise of obesity levels in children and young people (Bagwell 2011; Caraher et al. 2016; Burgoine et al. 2018). This link is noticeably stronger in socially disadvantaged urban areas (Harris, Schwartz, and Brownell 2009; Caraher et al. 2016). In the US there is evidence that black neighbourhoods are disproportionately exposed to fast food (Kwate 2008) and a recent UK study of consumption of fast food in a deprived London Borough observed that “school children from the Asian and Black ethnic groups appeared to be more frequent consumers of fast food as compared with other ethnic groups” (Patterson, Risby, and Chan 2012, 3). Overall, public health research indicates that “the double burden of low income and unhealthy neighbourhood food environment … .contribute jointly to social inequalities in health” (Burgoine et al. 2018, 1). In sum then, the environmental and social impacts of fast food seem to locate it as unequivocally at odds with any moves towards more sustainable food production and consumption.

Structural approaches to the consumption of food in poor neighbourhoods emphasise environmental factors rather than poor individual choices. The availability, affordability and acceptability of fast food, combined with limited possibilities for physical activity, and few opportunities to purchase fresh fruit and vegetables, are said to create “obesogenic environments” and contribute to rising obesity levels, particularly in young people (Kelly et al. 2019). Kirkland summarises this approach as intentionally “preventative, broad based, forward looking and suffused throughout the built environment” (2011, 465). She notes, however, that while the approach aims to blame environmental and social factors rather than individual failings for high levels of obesity, in practice, healthy eating and obesity initiatives often end up patronising and stigmatising poor and black communities:

The environmental account - the leading progressive account - may begin as a structural program for better health but quickly narrows to teaching correct consumption and lifestyle practices to the poor to make them less fat (Kirkland 2011, 480).

The tendency for initiatives to resort to a focus on individual education and behaviour change rather than grappling with the structural underpinnings of inequalities in health is particularly clear in the recent UK obesity strategy. While this starts by acknowledging that “obesity prevalence is highest amongst the most deprived groups in society”, expressing concerns about ethnic inequalities and recognising environmental factors in the form of the advertising and marketing of unhealthy food (Department of Health and Social Care 2020), the headline of the campaign is the offer of tools to provide individuals with advice on how to lose weight. In neo liberal societies the tendency for sustainability initiatives to focus on individual behaviour change rather than the structural factors which constrain or facilitate sustainable living is well rehearsed (Maniates 2001; Shove 2010), but is particularly easy to spot in the example of healthy eating.

1.3 Young people and fast food

Strategies to tackle young people’s consumption of fast food, informed by concerns about obesity and health impacts, often bypass the perspectives of young people themselves. Valentine (1996) notes that children and young people in cities tend to be cast either as vulnerable and in need of protection, or as constituting a danger in themselves. In the UK, both central Government obesity strategies and the London Strategy for Healthy and Sustainable food, largely position young people as vulnerable, with strategies designed to protect them from the dangers of unhealthy food (e.g. The London Food Strategy’s commitment to ban junk food advertising on the London underground and proposals to restrict new takeaways opening within 400m of schools, and the Obesity Strategy’s aim to ban the advertising of products high in fat, sugar and salt on TV and online before 9pm). Alongside pressure on advertisers, Caraher et al. (2016) note the prevalence of individualised healthy eating interventions aimed at parents for the most part, and to a lesser degree, young people and children through the schools they attend. With regard specifically to young black people, Jones (2019) details how as a primary target for obesity prevention research and initiatives they become the subject for “food pedagogy” with too little attention given to their own engagement with food, and in particular to elements of play, pleasure and knowledge.

In his immersive “sensory ethnography” of food and multiculture, Rhys Taylor focuses on chicken shops in East London and critiques the “ubiquitous and achingly naïve” hypothesis of a causal relationship between hot food take-aways and morbidity. He points to the:

Many intervening variables – coextensive with the deprivation of which cheap chicken is a part – that might be injurious to young people’s heath (2017, 84 see also Kirkland 2011).

He cautions against seeing the problems of the city “from above” suggesting that “the lack of attention to the actual experiences of city dwellers is of significant detriment to our understanding of the problems faced by today’s cities and the solutions to those problems” (Rhys Taylor 2020, 4).

A clear finding from the small body of work which approaches the consumption of fast food in cities from young people’s own perspectives is the importance attached to fast food outlets as affordable, friendly, safe social spaces in which they can meet friends and hang out (Thompson et al. 2018; Wills, Danesi, and Kapetanaki 2016; Rhys Taylor 2020). Beyond immediate opportunities to meet existing friends, fast food outlets may have broader community and cultural significance, particularly in multiethnic neighbourhoods. In a study of East London, Bagwell highlights the important role of small locally run fast food outlets as a source of ethnic minority employment as well as providing culturally acceptable food and a social meeting place for the local Bangladeshi community (2011). In addition to the observation that particular outlets may provide important places for specific religious and ethnic communities, other studies highlight how fast food outlets often offer opportunities for non-confrontational ethnic mixing (Jones et al. 2015).

The low price of much fast food is often identified as one of its key attractions for young people. Affordability is valued not simply because it enables young people to purchase a substantial amount of food but also because it enables them to behave – and be treated – as valued, independent consumers (Caraher et al. 2016; Wills, Danesi, and Kapetanaki 2016). None of these factors on their own, however, can fully explain the consumption of fast food. Brembeck et al. (2013) note that when children talk about food they highlight the importance of “nice tastes”. While this applies to all food, the particularly strong sensory appeal of the look, smell, taste and feel of fast food is evident (Rhys Taylor 2020).

In line with these studies, we engage with young people’s own constructions and experiences of fast food in order to better understand their perspectives on the role it plays in their lives. Our interest is shaped by a broader aim of understanding how young people account for what facilitates their “living well” in cities and exploring the implications of this for inclusive planning for urban sustainability.

2. The study

This paper draws on data from the CYCLES project (Children and Young people in Cities: Lifestyle, Evaluations and Sustainability), an international study seeking insights into young people’s everyday consumption, what they value, and their aspirations for the future. CYCLES is taking place in seven cities; Yokohama (Japan), Christchurch (New Zealand), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Makhanda (South Africa), Dhaka (Bangladesh), New Delhi (India) and Lambeth in London, UK. Each city has conducted desk top context studies, a qualitative focus group and photo elicitation study, and a survey with young people. We are reporting here on the work from the Lambeth qualitative study.

We begin by providing some background contextual information on Lambeth with a focus on issues of significance for children and young people, and then describe our methods.

2.1 Lambeth

Lambeth is one of the most densely populated boroughs in London and the fifth most densely populated borough nationally (Lambeth Children’s Partnership (LCP) 2020). It is predominantly young, compared both to other London Boroughs and to the rest of the UK, with 40% aged under 25, and is ethnically diverse, especially amongst young people with 63% of children and young people being BAME² (Lambeth Government 2017). The borough is one of the most deprived in London with an estimated 43% of children living in poverty (Trust for London 2020).

Lambeth is subject to all the difficulties of similar urban environments, including being expensive to live in, congested, and subject to poor air quality (Trust for London 2020). It has one of the highest densities of fast food shops located within 400m of schools (or a 5 minute walk) with approximately 113 per 100,000 population (Oki and Cunningham 2019).

Cuts to youth services have led to the closure of many council and voluntary sector run youth clubs and youth facilities, and the loss of youth worker posts to support young people (Berry 2019). It is within this environment that newly emerging strategies are being considered by the Lambeth Children’s Partnership, in association with multi-stakeholders to particularly focus on issues which affect young people in the borough most, including youth knife crime, climate change, and obesity (LCP 2020). There has also been an acknowledgement of the need to include young people in the decisions which directly or indirectly affect them and young people have been included in consultations about future planning for the borough (LCP 2020). Most importantly, three key priorities have been identified over the next 5 years – “inclusive growth, reducing inequality and strong and sustainable neighbourhoods” (LCP 2020, 10).

2.2 Methods

Our qualitative work in CYCLES aimed to understand children and young people’s everyday lives and consumption in cities paying attention to the domains of food; mobility; home life; leisure/communication; shopping and work and/or study. We also explored what they value most and what constrains and enables their capabilities to achieve that in sustainable ways.³

The age range 12–24 years was selected across the international project to include the experiences of young people through adolescence into early adulthood with recognition of the extent to which age may be understood and experienced variably in different cultural contexts. It extends to the upper limit of the United Nations definition of youth (15–24 years) and includes 12–14 year olds to capture a significant period at which many changes occur (transitions to adolescence and secondary education). Clearly 12–24 is a broad age range with the experiences and opportunities of school children being very different from those of young adults. Our study allows us, however, to trace some broad areas of commonality across participants’ accounts, and also indicates areas of difference which would benefit from further study.

Young people aged 12–24 resident in Lambeth were recruited and divided into three groups by age: 12–14 (n = 9), 16–17 (n = 4) and 18–24 (n = 5). The groups were recruited by different means and from different parts of the borough: the youngest group were recruited from an organisation which worked with children in Brixton; the middle group all belonged to a youth group in Streatham⁴ and the oldest participants were recruited in and around Vauxhall by a recruitment agency.⁵ Gender was mixed across the groups and the ethnic diversity of the area was well reflected. In the group of 12–14 year olds there were three boys and six girls, all were black (with African, Caribbean and middle Eastern backgrounds); the 16–17 year olds were all white males, and in the oldest group there were three young men and two young women four of whom were white and one black (with African background). All of the participants aged 12–17 were living with parents or guardians and were in full time education. All of the oldest participants were graduates. One was living back at home in the borough with his parents while waiting to start a postgraduate degree, while the others were living in shared houses as they had moved to London for work and the Vauxhall area was identified as a convenient and affordable place to live.

The study received ethical approval from the University of Surrey (UEC 2018 029 FASS). Informed consent was taken from both parents and children in the youngest group, and from the young people only in the two older groups. Each group took part in an initial focus group at which questions asked included how they get around, what they do in terms of employment or education, how they socialise, what they eat and how they shop, what they like about where they live and what they would change. Participants were then asked to create a photographic record of a day in their lives during the following week, providing images of: their everyday mobility (how they get around); their “normal” home-life (of energy and water use); their food consumption (what they eat, where and with whom); their most common and enjoyable form of leisure (how they relax and communicate); and something that represents how they spend most of their day (e.g. employment or education). In addition, all participants were asked to present images that showed something they like most about their local community and something they would like to change.

Follow up focus groups were conducted approximately 2 weeks later with participants’ photographs used to elicit discussion about everyday consumption and broader reflections on what aspects of local life enhance or constrain their ability to live well. Photo-elicitation has proved to be a successful method of generating talk and insight around consumption objects and practices (e.g. Cappello 2005; Cody 2012; Epstein et al. 2006) and about experiences of living within particular neighbourhoods (Dodman 2003; Holloway and Valentine 2000; Lomax 2012). All focus groups were recorded and transcribed in full.

As already outlined, our study did not focus specifically on food. Photographs about food acquisition were multiple and varied across the groups, however, with images of meals being prepared and being eaten, of various favourite takeout establishments, and other places where food could be bought. Not only did images of food proliferate but participants were noticeably more animated when talking about food and questions about it provoked greater group discussions and shared narratives than other topics. Discussion of food across the different ages, geographies and social contexts of participants varied, but in all the groups fast food was discussed as just one element of food practices. The youngest participants talked about places their parents shopped for food and took photos of family meals, the 16–17 year olds talked about family meals, their own cooking experiments, and the oldest participants talked about their independent food purchasing and preparation practices. In all of the groups some photographs of fast food establishments were presented and the use of local outlets discussed. In these pictures discussion of chicken shops predominated, reflecting the relative density of fried chicken outlets specific to London (Rhys Taylor 2020).

We used a thematic analysis approach to the data, supported by NVivo 11 and identified responses relating to food procurement, and consumption within and across the focus groups. Following initial coding, identified themes were discussed within the research team for confirmation or disconfirmation. Participants’ contributions within the paper are identified by focus group (FG), by age group (A=12–14, B=16–17 and C=18–24) and by focus group number (01, 02), so that a quotation from the second focus group with a member of the youngest age group would be designated FGA02.

In the following analysis we consider how fast food may contribute to participants’ sense of “living well”. Our analysis is divided into two sections, although in practice these elements are interconnected in young people’s accounts. Firstly, we highlight the accessibility and attractiveness of fast food and the opportunities it provides for autonomy and agency before outlining some of the ways in which it connects young people to other people and to local places.

3. Findings

3.1 Fast food – accessible, abundant, affordable, attractive, autonomous

Participants across all our focus groups emphasised the prevalence and accessibility of fast food outlets in their neighbourhoods, as illustrated by this conversation:

Interviewer: Have you got much round you that’s takeaway shops?

Participant A: Everywhere.

Participant B: Oh, they’re everywhere, every corner.

Participant A: I’ve got two on my road.

Participant B: Yeah, you can walk down there and there’s three chicken and chips shops.

Participant A: I have two chicken shops literally within 100 metres of each other.

Participant C: I’ve got a chicken shop which is basically my neighbour. (FGB1)

Children commented on the number and variety of fast food options in close proximity to their schools, enabling them to get their lunch from them during the school day:

So for lunch then it’s easy for me to go to places like McDonalds.

[There are] a lot of places but most of them are, like, local, nearby so just like, not, you don’t have to travel far just to go and get food. (FGA01)

Young people’s opportunities for everyday consumption are more reliant on windows of time, and income resources than adults given they are subject to day-to-day constraint and regulation within settings such as the school and the home (Daniel and Gustaffson 2010). Our youngest participants spoke of how having easy access to a number of fast food outlets meant they could visit them regularly as part of daily routines that were not monitored by adults, squeezing visits into short lunch breaks, or between school and home prior to the evening meal with family:

I normally go to the chicken and chip shop named [outlet]. After school, I like to go there. FGA01

This autonomy was positively evaluated as a pleasurable exception to the requirement to fit in with family food routines and activities “I don’t like the market. I have to go to the market early on Saturday morning”. (FGA01) Going to fast food outlets was characterised as something which participants “liked” to do with friends, rather than something which they “had” to do with family. Fattore, Mason and Watson suggest that one way in which children experience wellbeing in leisure is as “freedom from adult-determined activities and organisation” (2016, 247) with some consumption activities valued specifically because they do not align with adult preferences or include adults.

Fast food outlets are also accessible in terms of their opening hours, with opportunities to buy food and drink from early in the morning until midnight, and in some cases beyond. This was particularly appreciated by those in the oldest group for whom fast food was an occasional part of a late night out.

Not only are fast food outlets abundant, accessible and the food cheap, there is also a wide choice of cuisine available:

In Lambeth, they have lots of different, like, cultures of food as well … So, I can get Chinese food or Indian or something like that, so you have a wide range of food. (FGA01)

In the initial focus group in the youth club with 16–17 year olds the enthusiasm which this rich choice generated was apparent:

Interviewer: So tell me how you get your food, what kind of food you like.

Participant B: Oh god, we’re going to be here ages [laughter].

Participant A: So my mum cooks mostly every day, but then if I come to club or I’ve got multiple things to do and I’m coming to club later, what I’ll usually do is – due to like being next to the high road, we have so much choice. I’ll either get fried chicken, kebab, fish and chips, Chinese, Indian.

Participant B: And he came with all of them once, all of them [laughter]. (FGB01)

The sense of shared fun with which this anecdote was relayed was in stark contrast to earlier discussion in the group of the context of everyday fears for their safety which all the participants lived with:

Living in an area like Streatham there’s constant danger around you, you hear on the news, “This man has been stabbed here … ” So you know the dangers around you living in a place like Streatham so you got to kind of like watch your back, check your shoulders and your walking, stuff like that. (FGB01)

Sociological perspectives on food consumption have critiqued the notion of “choice” in terms of social, cultural and economic limits on individual choice about what is eaten, when and with whom (Warde 1997). The accessibility and affordability of fast food, however, enabled our participants to exercise some level of economic agency in consumption that was not available to them in other aspects of their lives and which they clearly relished (Fattore, Mason and Watson 2016).

As in all spheres of consumer culture, the relationship between young people and fast food clearly has elements of both agency and manipulation (Rief 2008; Russell and Tyler 2005). Having children and young people as regular customers has shaped fast food outlets’ marketing practices so that those located in close proximity to local schools target the younger consumer with cheap food offers and treat them as valued consumers (Attard 2019).

Wills, Danesi and Kapetanaki note that:

Young people from socio-economically deprived areas can have significant social and economic capital within the local food environment. This is fuelled by neoliberalism, however, and the marketing of food and drink to young people who are all considered “fair game”. (2016, 206)

Thus, we note that while young people enjoy a sense of agency in relation to fast food, this is actively encouraged by fast food outlets. As Rief (2008) suggests, recognising- rather than trying to resolve – such ambivalence is central to sociological analysis of consumption.

In our focus groups the elements of convenient access to outlets, generous portion size, choice and low price were frequently mentioned together.

Participant B: Say you’re walking from here to the [youth] club or you’re walking from here to a relative’s house, you just see chicken shops everywhere, and four wings and chips is only two quid and usually you have about two quid in your pocket.

Participant A: Yeah, the rough change, you just get rid of it. You go, “Oh yeah, I can get a meal with that” [laughter]. (FGB01)

All of this adds up to a situation in which buying fast food is easy and convenient, and again this needs to be understood in the context of young lives which are often far from easy in other ways:

Interviewer: What do you think about having all these fast food shops near you?

Participant B: It makes life easier, it’s not just like for time, it makes things easier and for money it’s easy as well; I can get 5 chicken wings and chips for like £2.00.”

Participant A: Say if you’re out and you’ve missed dinner at your mum’s or something, you just go, “Oh, two quid, chicken and chips, done.” (FGB01)

In an insightful report London’s Child Obesity Taskforce (2019) draw attention to the interacting elements of low family income, poor housing conditions and parents’ working lives in contributing to a situation where purchasing fast food is readily understandable. It is not only that fast food is convenient, but the sense of fun and enjoyment which young people associate with it is palpable and significant.

3.2 Fast food – social and spatial connection

Whilst public health research focuses on the nutritional aspects of food consumption, sociological research has argued for attention to be paid to the cultural and social context within which food is acquired and consumed (Neely, Walton, and Stephens 2014; Beardsworth and Keil 2013). Food is not solely consumed as sustenance for the body, it is also fundamental to “nourishing social relationships” (Neely, Walton, and Stephens 2014). When our participants talked about fast food it was not merely in terms of the pleasure of eating the food itself but was also about its place in their social networks and local geographies.

In line with the findings of previous studies, cafés and fast food outlets clearly provided some of our participants with important local social spaces (Jones et al. 2015; Thompson et al. 2018; Bagwell 2011, Rhys Taylor 2020). The 15–17 year olds cited “caff” as an example of a mutually valued reference point for socialising. “Caff” was a place both where the young men enacted the role of workers (“like most workers they go caff every morning”) and also celebrate with friends. An image of a meal at “caff” prompted the following discussion showing how the place and the opportunity it offered for shared time was as important as the food:

Participant A: If I go to work for my uncle or I just go with the lads innit, we just go caff.

Interviewer: You just call it caff.?

Participant A: Yeah. It’s like I get fry up, you read the paper, you have a cup of tea and you just gossip – it’s quality.

Participant B: Caff’s legendary.

Participant C: The caff is like a special thing.

Participant A: It’s a nice meeting place. If I work or something like most workers they go caff every morning. If I’m with my friends then it would have to be someone’s birthday or someone’s achieved something and then we say, “Caff’s on us.” And then we go caff. (FGB 02)

Alongside places identified as having special significance within friendship groups, fast food outlets were also discussed as longstanding fixtures, part of the fabric of the locality. The shared and collaborative practice of eating out in mutually known and understood spaces is a vital part of “practising” communities (Neal et al. 2019; Studdert and Walkerdine 2016). Participants across all three focus groups took many more images of the fast food outlets where they get their food, than they did of the food itself, and spoke more about specific outlets and their owners than the food they sold, emphasising the role of fast food outlets in shaping young people’s ongoing local knowledge and attachment to community. One of the 15–17 year olds explained his connection to a particular chicken shop in relation to its owner:

Interviewer: What is it about this particular place you like?

Participant: The food is nice but the man that works there - his jokes.

Interviewer: Oh okay, so it’s the whole thing it’s not just the food?

Participant: I have a conversation with boss man.

Interviewer: So does he know you?

Participant: Yeah, he knows me. (FGB02)

The importance of this sense of shared knowledge that “everyone” knows a particular place, and “everyone” goes there was echoed in the older group. The young man who had grown up in the area shared an image of what he described as the “best” local chicken shop and with it his local knowledge and sense of connection:

That’s just, like, … . the chicken shop. Like, literally the whole of Kennington and Vauxhall literally go there … .Yes, see, everyone goes in to buy … It’s cheap. It’s the same owner that has been there, since I’ve lived here, for, like, eight years, seven years. It’s pretty cool. (FGC02)

In this discussion the significance of the place is established by reference to the fact that “everyone” goes there and that the owner is well known. Thus it plays a role in creating and sustaining a sense of local belonging which stretches beyond a specific friendship group into connections with the broader community and locality.

Fast food outlets were identified as places to spend time, but also as local landmarks used by young people as places to initially meet up before spending time together:

Chicken Cottage is a place that we meet it’s like a meeting point, like everyone knows the shops … .yeah, if we’re gonna go and get food we text each other, “Meet at Cottage” and then everyone goes there. (FGB01)

Food might then be eaten on the streets or in local parks, providing a reason for young people to spend time in and “claim” some of this local outdoor space. Thus, fast food not only provided a way of making and maintaining social connections but also spatial ones – to their local streets and parks.

In the group of oldest participants an image of a local park prompted the following observation:

Sometimes, we go there [park] and … on a Saturday, you’ll find loads of people. Loads of people drinking, having fun with music, with their cars open. You’re like, “Wow, you don’t see this every time.” There’s people coming for chicken only. (FGC02)

Here the chicken from a local shop is an important part of the “fun” in the park. The youngest participants also talked about eating in parks, describing it as “a good thing” about the area that there were opportunities to buy fast food close to where they played:

It’s a good thing I like about this area too, … what he said, chicken and chips, there’s a shop there, and … like, kids, they go to the park and then they’re hungry, and they don’t want to go to McDonalds which is in Brixton, or Iceland that’s in Elephant and Castle just to get ice cream, so it’s a good thing that there’s a chicken and chip shop right there, so then people can get fast food very quickly, that’s why it’s called fast food. (FGA01)

Conversations about the location of fast food outlets provided a way of mapping their area and demonstrating local knowledge and sense of connection. In the youngest group discussion of what was good in the local area was difficult to engender, but shared understandings about where the “best” fast food places were sparked enthusiastic conversation. Amongst the oldest participants similar conversations created points of connection between participants who did not know each other. In the following extract, Participant A, who grew up locally, drew the other participants in with a tour of the best local outlets:

Participant A: A nice little fried chicken shop’s just down the road, it literally has one of the best strip rows in the whole of Lambeth.

Participant B: Yes, my house mate she loves it.

Participant A: Yes and it's affordable too, and it's affordable. But then there's also McDonalds literally right next to London Eye which is like a ten minute walk from here.

Participant A: Southbank.

Participant C: No, along the river.

Participant A: It's literally on a straight road, it's .. and it's got a little arcade next to it.

Participant C: Isn't it always full of tourists? I think there's tourists everywhere.

Participant D: Is it 24 hours?

Participant A: Yes. [laughter] (FGC01)

These conversations revealed that fast food not only afforded connections to friends, but also connected them to their wider community, and to their local environment through spending time socialising whilst eating in community spaces, and through their shared knowledge and local understandings of where to get the food they want.

4. Discussion and conclusions

It is critical to re-emphasise that while our analysis focuses on occasions in which participants talked about fast food, this was by no means the only or dominant kind of food consumption discussed. Participants under 18 talked about family shopping, home cooked meals and their own cooking. Those in the oldest group spoke mostly about preparing meals at home, with discussions of the best local fast food outlets usually being raised by the participant who had grown up in the area and whose local knowledge was grounded in his teens. As one of our participants said, “I rarely get a takeaway to be honest”. Participants also referenced aspects of specifically healthy and sustainable eating – the quality of fresh fruit and vegetables available at Brixton market was celebrated by some in the youngest age group and two of those in the older group talked about their vegan diets. Participants were not unaware of the health impacts of fast food consumption. Even when outlining the ways in which fast food was “good”, one of the 16 year olds clarified that “I mean if you eat it like breakfast and lunch, it’s not good”. Thus, our focus here on young people and fast food should not be read as suggesting that participants were regularly consuming fast food, or that it was the only food they enjoyed. We focused on fast food because we were struck by the animated conversations it elicited, with our focus on what these discussions reveal about elements that make for young people’s living well in the city.

Approaches to young people’s wellbeing in cities which take an etic, or outsider, perspective emphasise the negative nutritional effects of fast food consumption and the extent to which it exacerbates existing inequalities in health. Moreover, the negative environmental impacts of the production, procurement and consumption of fast food are hard to ignore (Hutchinson, Singh, and Walker 2012; Goggins and Rau 2015). Thus, it is unsurprising that young people’s proximity to cheap fast food is viewed as a key problem within strategies for the provision of healthy and sustainable food.

Only viewing the context for young people’s wellbeing and sustainability from “above”, however, impoverishes understanding of the problems faced by cities and appropriate solutions to them (Rhys Taylor 2020; Bagwell 2011). “Situated knowledge” and insider perspectives are crucial for developing a contextual understanding which might inform the most salient conditions for sustainable wellbeing (McGregor, Walker, and Katz-Gerro 2019; Moore and Woodcraft 2019; Sender et al. 2019). As our research highlights, when such an emic or insider perspective is taken, a very different picture of fast food consumption emerges.

For the young people we spoke with, the affordability of fast food offered them opportunities for exercising independence and agency in consumption in ways which fitted with the routines of their everyday lives. Fast food outlets provided places they could comfortably spend time with friends and offered known local landmarks for coordinating meeting up. Shared local knowledge about outlets provided ways of collectively mapping their neighbourhoods and proved to be the point in our focus groups when conversation between participants became most animated and humorous. Crucially fast food was understood as enjoyable – as fun, as tasty and exciting.

While health is an absolutely critical dimension of living well, other considerations such as social inclusion, sociality and local connection are also fundamental. Fast food outlets provide accessible places to meet and spend time with friends in a context where cuts to youth centres and activities have made other options sparse. Further our participants’ narratives revealed that the purchase of fast food also connected them to their wider community. Fast food outlets facilitate connections to friends, to spaces and also to the communities within which they live. Attachment to place and community are important for identity formation and individual wellbeing (Groves 2015) and comprise a significant contribution to the sense of what makes for a good place to live (Moore and Woodcraft 2019); they are key affordances to consider in urban sustainability planning (Agyeman et al. 2016).

The ways in which participants in our study talked about what was “good” about fast food resonates with broader research on how children and young people understand wellbeing.

Fattore, Mason, and Watson’s (2016) international research concludes that children’s perspectives on wellbeing emphasise elements of sociality and fun. They distilled six overarching themes or domains of wellbeing prioritised by children: agency; security/safety; self and identity; leisure; economic wellbeing and health. We clearly see elements of these in our participants’ discussions around food. Our research is limited by its small sample and the broad age range covered. We have drawn out key themes across the data, but age differences were also apparent in orientations to fast food. Further research exploring the ways in which fast food fits into the everyday lives of young people of specific age groups, and how it relates to their particular understandings of living well would be valuable.

Popular debates about fast food consumption often stray into moralising about and criticising the consumption of the poor (Miller 2001). In steering away from this, an insistence on the need to understand the role which fast food plays in “living well” for young people does not have to swing into uncritical acceptance or even celebration of its consumption – as Rhys Taylor reminds us the problems associated with it are not “just” social constructions. How then can we reconcile these two perspectives? Rief (2008) suggests that rather than trying to arbitrate between “good” and “bad” forms of consumption, the complexity and ambiguity of consumption needs to be:

Analysed and debated in full awareness of ambivalent personal, social, cultural, political and environmental effects. (Rief 2008, 571)

Paying attention to young people’s discussions around fast food provides a lens through which some of the underlying factors which support their capacity to “live well” can be viewed. Much of this is arguably not strictly about food at all – rather it emphasises their needs for opportunities to develop independence, for spaces to be with friends, for a sense of connection to community and places for fun and enjoyment. Fast food might be seen to be acting as a “satisfier” not only for “subsistence” but for a range of other underlying needs, which could arguably be met more sustainably in other ways (Jackson, Jager, and Stagl 2003). Thus, young people’s perspectives on fast food might be reconciled with public health and sustainability discourses if the focus on the lived experience is downplayed in favour of a focus on the underlying needs revealed.

The potential danger with adopting this needs-based approach is that it can revert to a top down model of what is “good” for young people and risks erasing their distinctive perspectives. It tends to reconcile what young people “need” with a pre-existing vision of what is important in terms of wellbeing and sustainability, positioning them in need of protection rather than taking seriously their right to participate as citizens (Wills, Danesi, and Kapetanaki 2016). As Agyeman et al. (2016) remind us, there is no universal pathway to sustainability, but justice is always an intrinsic element. Social justice is not only about fair outcomes but also about fair and inclusive decision making – it is not only about ensuring that everyone has a slice of the (healthy) pie, but also that everyone has a chance to contribute to the decision about what kind of pie is baked (Nussbaum 2009). Young people’s own perspectives on what is important for them to live well within their neighbourhood need to be heard and taken into account even when this adds complexity and is seemingly counter to established approaches to sustainability and urban wellbeing. Focusing on the factors which people identify as significant in creating a sense of prosperity or a “good life”, Moore and Woodcraft conclude:

Acknowledging local perspectives that are situated in real world conditions and constraints will enable policy makers to pay attention to the processes and conditions that enable or inhibit prosperity even when they challenge established ways of thinking. (2019, 290)

It is not enough to give young people the opportunity to say what is important to them in research contexts, they need their views to be taken seriously and for these views to be included in strategy discussions and policy implementation. Evidence from our research suggests that young people are given the opportunity to air their perspectives, but do not feel their views are taken seriously:

We’re listened to properly but we’re not taken seriously enough. (FGB01)

People just sit there and listen and they zone out but they don’t really want to sit there and take it all in and respond in a proper way. (FGB01)

I don’t think you have much say over anything really have you, or in general. (FGC01)

The solution to the “problem” of fast food outlets is most often the suggestion that healthy and sustainable food premises, outlets, markets, stores and cafes should be introduced into local areas to encourage young people to shift to more wholesome forms of food purchase. The introduction of healthy, wholefood stores and cafes into an area, however, often signals a process of food and environmental gentrification whereby niche outlets entice wealthier, usually white residents to relocate, whilst at the same time, displacing existing residents (Agyeman et al. 2016). As Anguelovski has shown, “food justice studies have exposed that lower-income residents and people of colour tend not to benefit from alternative food initiatives” (2016, 92). Not only is the food on offer in ostensibly sustainable outlets often too expensive for young people, the ambience often clearly indicates that they are not the target customers. Rhys Taylor (2020) provides examples of “reconstructed” chicken shops in East London which in making the product healthier and more sustainable simultaneously remove all the aspects which made the outlets attractive, accessible and safe for young people.

Our research highlights young people’s need for places where they feel comfortable, can exercise autonomy and be with friends away from adult scrutiny. Currently for some, fast food outlets provide such attractive and convenient spaces. Initiatives to encourage young people to eat more healthy and sustainable food would do well to focus on the spaces of food consumption as much as the food itself (Brembeck and Johansson 2010).

Tastes in food consumption are fundamentally shaped by elements of culture, class, ethnicity, family and community tradition (Bourdieu 1984). We suggest that consideration of age is also important, with preferences for particular foods and consumption spaces reflecting particular stages in the lifecourse. Perspectives on sustainable consumption are dominated by middle class, white and adult aesthetics which view fast food as distasteful (see Kato 2013; Guthman 2008) and fail to take seriously young people’s evident appreciation of it.

Distinctions between “good” and “bad” foods are not only evaluations of nutritional value but also ways of displaying and reinforcing social and cultural divisions (Bourdieu 1984). With regard specifically to fried chicken, Rhys Taylor suggests that at the heart of its problematisation is “its cultural significance to twenty-first century Britain’s most abject of social groups: low income multicultural inner-city youth” (2020, 90).

Planning for sustainable food in cities needs to be genuinely inclusive, prepared to recognise not only the underlying affordance which fast food offers young people (Burningham et al. 2020) but also to accommodate their divergent social and gustatory preferences. If the process of decision making became more genuinely participatory then the resulting vision of a sustainable food environment should be expected to be diverse, catering to various understandings of what makes for a “good life”.

Concern about young people’s consumption of fast food has the hallmarks of a moral panic (Mannion and Small 2019). For most young people, fast food consumption is only one aspect of broader everyday food practices. Too often the focus on proximity to fast food outlets and obesity obscures deeper engagement with the underlying problems of poverty and inequality in urban environments. The priority for those concerned about sustainability and young people’s wellbeing in cities must be to refocus on the systemic underpinnings of social and environmental problems (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010). This has been recognised by the London’s Child Obesity Taskforce (2019) whose key aim is to end child poverty. In trying to navigate the highly charged debates around fast food, obesity, health and sustainability Kirkland leaves us with this:

A final suggestion is … more aspirational: to reorient ourselves toward what we really want—poverty reduction, for instance, universal health care, or better public transportation—and to make political arguments for those goals … . It is unethical and self-defeating to ride anxiety about fatness to fulfil political goals that actually call for a sustained commitment to economic redistribution for their long-term success (2011, 481)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economics and Social Research Council under Grant number ES/M010163/1.

Notes

1 We take our definition of fast food sources from existing literature on its health consequences for young people in urban settings (e.g. Fulkerson 2018). We include all forms of hot food takeout services (including those that also offer limited seating), both global chains and small businesses.

2 Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic

3 For discussion of key findings across the cities see Burningham et al. (2020).

4 Organisations made information about the project available to group members who could then choose whether or not to participate.

5 A map of the borough can be found here: https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/sites/default/files/State-of-the-borough-2012.pdf