Constellations of children’s everyday worlds: exploring interconnections between food practices and other everyday practices

It is acknowledged that there are many factors influencing how food practices are performed across structural, social and individual domains (Shepherd et al., 2006; Krølner et al., 2011). As these factors inter-connect they form complex food systems (Friel et al., 2017). Food system research has extended to specifically examine children’s food worlds, although it has not always incorporated children’s perspectives (for example, Fox and Timmer, 2020; Raza et al., 2020; United Nations Children’s Fund, 2018). However, there is a shift occurring to include children’s voices within food systems transformation (Fleming et al., 2023; United Nations Children’s Fund, 2023). Child-centred assessments, facilitated by examining children’s food practices within the context of their everyday lives and environments, are recommended as a foundational principle towards achieving child-centred food systems (Fleming et al., 2023; Hawkes et al., 2020).

Social practice theory provides a framework to explore how everyday practices interact within context (Hui et al., 2016; Shove et al., 2012). Practice theories shift the focus of inquiry away from individuals and instead examine practices as the fundamental unit of enquiry (Blue et al., 2016). Within this theoretical domain, food practices may encompass activities such as food consumption, food preparation, food planning or food acquisition, among others (Castelo et al., 2021; Wright-Pedersen et al., 2024). When practices connect together within time and space, they form interwoven constellations of practices, which Hui et al. (2016, p. 1) refer to as the “basic domain of study of the social sciences”.

Studies that have applied practice theory to examine everyday food practices have predominantly focused on adults and families (Torkkeli et al., 2021; Torkkeli et al., 2020; Torkkeli et al., 2022; Venn et al., 2017). The limited research that has explored children’s food practices has mostly been garnered from the viewpoint of adults (e.g. parents and teachers) and adult researchers (for example, Torkkeli et al., 2020; Gram and Grønhøj, 2016). Children are known to actively engage within a multitude of food practices across their daily lives, at times independent from adults (Wright-Pedersen et al., 2024). Children are also competent at participating in research (James and Prout, 2015; Wright-Pedersen et al., 2023), with examples of child-informed investigations into other domains of their everyday practices, such as physical activity (Spotswood et al., 2019) and general consumption (Nairn and Spotswood, 2015). These previous studies have exemplified the usefulness of this theoretical framing in exploring how children’s everyday practices affect one another across and within children’s spaces.

Furthermore, children often engage in a variety of everyday activities (such as play, schooling, extra-curricular activities, etc.) in the same times and spaces as many food practices. However, previous examinations of children’s food practices and food systems have tended to focus on food practices in isolation from other everyday practices (Fox and Timmer, 2020; Raza et al., 2020). This study aims to address these gaps by exploring how children perceive their food practices as interconnected and influential on each other and other everyday practices to add breadth to current knowledge of how food fits within the context of their everyday lives. This increased understanding may also assist in explaining why some practices dominate in spaces while others disappear. Subsequently, this knowledge may inform how to reinforce or interrupt connections between food and other everyday practices, adding to the current literature on how to maintain or transform the ways in which children currently perform food practices within and between spaces (Shove et al., 2012; Castelo et al., 2021). Ultimately, children within this research are conceptualised as active participants within food systems and food-related interventions, which consider their interconnected everyday worlds may be designed. This research therefore applied social practice theory to explore constellations of everyday food practices across the spaces that children occupy based on the descriptions of eight-to twelve-year-olds.

The data presented in this article were part of a broader study into children’s perspectives on their food practices. A qualitative participatory ethnographic approach grounded in social constructionism was taken. This study was conducted in accordance with ethical guidelines and was approved by the Queensland University of Technology Human Research Ethics Committee (QUT/UHREC/5274).

This study was based in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Within Australia, most children attend primary school between the ages of four/five to eleven/twelve years. Children spend approximately six hours a day at school, with two or three structured breaks occurring throughout the day. Designated eating times within these breaks typically range between 10 and 15 min with children sitting on the ground or benches. The large majority of Australian schools within metropolitan areas do not provide school meals; instead, children either bring food packed in containers (most commonly lunchboxes) from home or purchased at a school canteen (known as a tuckshop in Queensland). This is in contrast to plated school-provided meals eaten at a table as is common in many other countries.

Methods have been reported in greater detail elsewhere (Wright-Pedersen et al., 2024). Briefly, families were recruited via paid social media advertising (Meta™ platform). Sampling aimed to achieve a maximum spread across the target ages (8–12 years), socioeconomic status and sex. Socioeconomic status was broadly determined using by categorising participant’s residential postcode to the Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) (Australia Bureau of Statistics, 2018). The IRSD is determined from national census survey economic and social data, where a low IRSD score (i.e. quintile 1) is considered relatively more disadvantaged than a high score (i.e. quintile 5) (Australia Bureau of Statistics, 2018). Age was based upon date of birth and sex was self-reported.

Once enrolled in the study, caregivers returned consent forms via email or at interviews. Children’s informed consent was obtained by showing them a short, animated study information video. Children were then asked consent confirming questions and given an opportunity to ask questions before being asked to provide verbal or written consent.

Data were collected from children between September 2022 and January 2023 through creative draw-and-tell interviews and Photovoice. Forty-two children from 28 families (average age 9.4 years, 52% female, IRSD score 3.57) participated in creative draw-and-tell interviews. Twenty-one of these children from 16 families then agreed to participate in Photovoice activities. One child/family withdrew from the Photovoice component for unknown reasons, resulting in an average age of 9.6 years, 55% female cohort and an IRSD average score of four.

The first author conducted all interviews and training. All interviews were audio-recorded and conducted at children’s homes, local public facilities, university campuses or using online video conferencing software (https://zoom.us/). Children could choose for their caregivers to accompany them during interviews, or otherwise, caregivers were present in the background.

During creative interviews, children were guided through drawing pictures and answering questions according to a semi-structured interview guide based on social practice theory. Children who proceeded to Photovoice were trained by the first author in the method by stepping through a three-minute video with children and their caregivers based on the Photovoice guide in Supplementary file 1. This guide was also provided to families to keep. Children used their own device or one provided by the research team to take photos of food-related activities that they perceived as important to them over a two-week period. After two weeks, photos were returned (after children and caregivers reviewed the sensitivity of content) and Photovoice interviews were conducted. The researcher prompted children to choose which photos they wished to talk about before commencing questioning, according to a semi-structured interview guide based on social practice theory, similar to that of creative interviews. For example, to understand other practices occurring in the same temporal and spatial domains, children were asked “Was anything else happening when you took this picture” during Photovoice interviews. The full Photovoice interview guide outlines social practice theory constructs associated with each question (see Supplementary file 2). Children and their caregivers chose how their photos could be used in publications (i.e. not at all, with/without blurred faces) and signed image release forms for photos with identifiable faces.

Draw-and-tell interviews lasted approximately one hour, and Photovoice interviews lasted approximately 30 min. For all interviews, data saturation was achieved when children’s responses to interviewer questions produced limited new data (Saunders et al., 2018).

All audio data were transcribed verbatim using Descript automated software (https://www.descript.com/) and cleaned by the first author. Coding and thematic analysis were conducted in NVivo 14 (released March 2023, https://lumivero.com/products/nvivo/). Children were assigned pseudonyms by the authors to maintain anonymity. Age and sex of children are presented with quotes to provide demographic descriptives. Throughout this article, brands unique to the Australian context quoted by children have been replaced with generic terms.

In order to explore everyday food practices and the constellations created when practices interconnect, Castelo et al. (2021) propose “zooming in” and “zooming out” on practices. “Zooming in” on food practices examines the interconnected nature of elements (materials, meaning, competences) and how these configurations of practices are performed across differing dimensions (spatial, temporal, social, practitioner backgrounds). “Zooming out” examines the connections between practices (i.e. food and other practices) that form practice bundles and wider constellations of practices, as well as the contexts these bundles and constellations are situated within (Castelo et al., 2021) (see Figure 1).

The links between practices can be referred to as “connections” (Hui et al., 2016). Connections come in many forms, including as entire practices themselves, specific practice dimensions, or as elements that are transported between practices (Shove et al., 2012; Hui et al., 2016).

When connections are formed between practices, harmonious or conflicting bundles are created. Harmonious practice bundles form when the elements necessary to perform each practice are accessible to both practices. More tightly woven harmonious co-dependent bundles are referred to as complexes. Complexes may present as sequences, for example, food preparation practices are necessary before food consumption, whereby the material element of food serves as a connection (Shove et al., 2012; Castelo et al., 2021; Blue et al., 2016).

Conflicting practice bundles compete for elements (Shove et al., 2012; Castelo et al., 2021; Blue et al., 2016). For example, the body as a material element within the conflicting bundle of brushing teeth and packing a lunchbox in the morning. Dominant practices within these conflicting practice bundles are those that are able to capture practice elements (i.e. materials, meanings or competence) from what then may become the recessive or non-dominant practice (Shove et al., 2012).

Abductive thematic analysis (Timmermans and Tavory, 2012) was employed by the research team to produce a codebook based upon the social practice theory framework (Figure 1). Initial coding related to the types of everyday practices that children described, as well as zooming in on food practice elements and dimensions and zooming out on contexts and the connections between practices. Everyday practice codes were defined as “food practice” themes (informed by conceptual practice theory frameworks (Castelo et al., 2021) and food literacy constructs (Vidgen and Gallegos, 2014)), as well as “other everyday practices” as a theme. Food practice codes included food planning, preparation, acquisition, consumption and tidy-up. Other everyday practice codes included transport, tasks, socialising, non-food shopping, watching screens, relaxing, active play (including sports), learning, getting ready for school and caring responsibilities.

As the objective of this article was to examine children’s descriptions of the interrelated nature of food practices with each other, and other everyday practices, coding stripes and matrix coding queries were conducted in NVivo and analysed to determine the connections between practices. Two matrix coding queries were run. The first examined the interaction between food practices (into rows) with other everyday practices (into columns) (see Supplementary file 3 for screenshot). The second examined the interaction between food practices themselves (into both rows and columns) (see Supplementary file 4 for screenshot). Results showed that interconnecting food and other everyday practices formed bundles. Coding stripes in transcripts were used to confirm these results and check the sequencing of practices. Once checked, matrix coding results were thematically categorised as harmonious or conflicting based on whether children described being able to perform both at the same time or if one practice dominated and the other could not be performed.

All authors are white, female, Australian-born adults educated within the dietetic profession. The first author was a PhD candidate during the study period and the second and third authors are academic supervisors with backgrounds in qualitative research methodologies. The first author has no children, and the second and third authors are mothers. The authors acknowledge their position in relation to the analysis and interpretation of children’s descriptions.

The food practices described by children were categorised as planning, acquisition, preparation, consumption and tidy-up food practices (see coloured boxes in Figure 2). Children’s descriptions of their everyday practices provided insights into how constellations of practices were formed as connections were made. In the sections below, children’s food practice constellations are presented by outlining how elements and practices formed connections and then how connections with other everyday practices formed harmonious and conflicting bundles.

Children described practice connections as predominantly taking the form of visible materials (as a practice element) such as food, the body and other objects such as lunchboxes and school bags, or less visible meanings such as enjoyment or commensality. Connections also presented as entire practices (i.e. “in-between practices” (Castelo et al., 2021)), such as transport practices connecting children attending school to food shopping practices before returning home. Competence also formed a less visible connection but was necessary for practices to be performed simultaneously within harmonious bundles, such as skills in consuming food with one hand and playing handball with the other.

Children’s food practices were described as conflicting or harmoniously bundled with other everyday practices. Harmonious practices were typically co-located in similar temporal and spatial settings, whereas conflicting practices were sometimes located in separate spatial settings where food practices would be performed (for example, play within the home and food shopping within supermarkets). Bundles for selected food practices most described by children are outlined in Table 1.

Harmonious bundles formed when children were able to use the material elements necessary for each practice simultaneously in time and space. When meanings for performing each practice aligned, connections between harmonious bundles were strengthened. Competence (i.e. knowledge and skills) within each practice, and to perform both simultaneously within the bundle, was also necessary.

The harmonious bundling of food consumption and screen viewing (as a passive leisure activity) was one of the most described by children within the home environment. Due to the nature of screens, children were able to use their bodies (as a shared material) to perform each at the same time and within the same place. This was also the case for reading and other passive leisure activities bundled with food consumption.

Socialising with family and friends harmoniously bundled with food consumption practices across multiple settings. Children described socialisation practices as enjoyable experiences where they conversed over meals with other, using terms such as “family time”. Although family time was described by children as competing with screen viewing whilst performing food consumption (as in the extract below), sometimes it was also bundled as a family activity, such as “family movie nights” revealing how meanings could conflict or align in the same practice bundles.

The consumption of take-away and snack-like foods harmoniously bundled with transport practices, mostly in cars, to and from places where other activities are conducted, particularly within the context of busy schedules in between other everyday practices. Again, children were able to use their bodies (as a shared material) to perform each at the same time and within the same place. For example, eating “car dinner” after school but before commencing after-school activities as described by Hannah.

Food acquisition and the subsequent consumption of less nutritious foods followed many active play activities. These bundles were normalised and wrapped up in meanings of rewards, socialising and the special nature of the occasion. However, the meaning of health and the physical implications of less nutritious foods were governed by parents and prioritised for some children, resulting in this bundling being uncoupled upon occasion, as described by Kai.

In cases where non-food practices tended to be prioritised in children’s lives, such as play or learning, harmoniously bundling food practices with these increased the likelihood of children’s involvement within the food practice. Examples of this were described by children when food was integrated (as a shared material) within cooking at vacation care or for Sean, school classroom activities.

Conversely, conflicting bundles formed in instances where other everyday practices competed with food practice performances, typically for time and the body (as material elements). In one instance, food as a material was described as being used in a food fight, thus competing for consumption. Conflicting bundles especially arose when meanings associated with each practice also competed, causing one practice to be prioritised over another and thus dominate, or when children did not possess the competence to perform both simultaneously.

Due to the time-restricted nature of school breaks, conflicting practice bundles arose frequently within this spatial/temporal domain. Consequently, active play and food consumption practices were frequently described by children as conflicting due to not being able to use their bodies (as a material) to perform both simultaneously. Most children reported that their schools had separated these breaks into “eating” and “playing” times in recognition of this conflict. Most children preferred eating before play, even if their school had play time first, as it meant they could satiate hunger, had more energy for playing, and could use this energy before going back into classrooms to learn. This also allowed children to continue eating into their playing time if need be, particularly if they identified as a “slow eater”, indicating that children occasionally prioritised eating over play.

Although most instances of active play conflicted with consumption at school, Darius described how they were competent at playing handball with both hands and therefore could eat simultaneously compared to playing soccer.

Darius (boy, 11 years): Because like you could eat and play handball because like a handball’s easy to play. You could just play left-handed and eat one-handed. Like for me it’s simple because I play handball with both [hands]. But if you’re playing soccer on the big oval, you can’t [eat at the same time].

Children also described how socialisation practices sometimes conflicted with food consumption in these regulated time frames, where Lakshmi (girl, 11 years) described not being able to perform both simultaneously and did not finish their school lunch due to the enjoyment of talking with friends (as a prioritised meaning).

In these time-restricted scenarios, food practices themselves were also seen to conflict. Mia described how their assigned role of collecting tuckshop orders for the whole class conflicted with food consumption and play practices.

Food consumption practices were sometimes described by children as dominant compared to active play or passive leisure activities in other settings, typically due to hunger (as a prioritised meaning).

Conflicting bundles also arose when each practice could only be performed in very distinct spatial settings. For example, if children wanted to play at home, they would opt out of attending food shopping practices in supermarkets. This was also the case for screen viewing practices, where some children preferred to watch television (in living areas) instead of attending food shopping or preparing food for long periods of time (in kitchens).

Other everyday practices that were prioritised over food practices and competed for time and the body as a material included sleeping, caring for younger siblings, getting ready for school and learning activities that did not involve food, such as performing homework or classroom activities when in school.

Children described the sequenced performance of food practices as co-dependent complexes (i.e. tightly woven harmonious bundles) through the shared material of food (as shown in Figure 2). For example, food had to be acquired before preparation or consumption could take place. Although food as a material was not tangible within all food practices (i.e. planning and in some tidy-up practices), it was present conceptually as something to be gained in the future or had been previously.

From a practice perspective, children (as bodily materials) described being able to enter the food practice “sequence” at any point, where other people as bodily materials (for example, parents) would fill in the “gaps” in the sequence, performing the practice instead of children. In the case of packaged or pre-prepared food, a nondescript machine may have performed the preparation step of the food practice sequence instead of children. Consequently, children did not always describe performing the sequence of food practices in a linear fashion. For example, children would describe acquiring and then immediately consuming food if it was already prepared, particularly if the food was provided to them by another person.

Food practices could also circle back onto one another or even skip practices in the sequence. For example, children occasionally described acquiring but not necessarily consuming food, where food may have been disposed or consumed by another person. In the case of managing leftovers (as a tidy-up practice), children described how leftovers may be consumed in subsequent meals, thus circling back into future consumption practices.

The school lunchbox is presented as an example of a material object connecting the practice of packing school lunch boxes within the home (as a food preparation practice) and food consumption practices within schools, thus forming a sequenced complex. The connections between both practices are presented in Figure 3.

Through this inter-practice connection, the spatial domain of the home can be seen to influence foods consumed at school, but likewise the spatial domain of the school influenced foods prepared and packed into lunchboxes at home. Key examples of this were school rules dictating that children could not bring nut-related products in school lunches, and that children were required to bring fruit (or vegetables) for “brain” breaks implemented by schools. Children also described how items in their school lunchbox were shaped and influenced by seeing what other children ate at school.

Parental governance within the home also influenced what was packed into lunchboxes and therefore consumed at school. Children reported parents stipulating rules around what foods could be packed into lunchboxes, typically encouraging more nutritious options, and creating “snack boxes” in fridges and cupboards to nudge children to select foods from. Accordingly, children talked about balancing foods that went into lunchboxes for school consumption, aiming to have a mix of both nutritious (such as vegetables, fruit, juice) and less nutritious items (such as homemade cake, bakery items, chip packets or candy).

The consumption environment and associated infrastructure (or lack of) within schools also influenced what foods children could bring within lunches. For example, children described needing to pack snack-like foods that they could consume quickly due to short mealtimes at school, and not being able to pack some preferred foods (such as curries) as they were likely to leak and go cold, especially when they did not have access to microwaves. Similarly, children were guided by what food and preparation infrastructure they had access to within their home, sometimes using extra containers to put smaller foods into lunchboxes, and ice bricks to keep food cool, particularly when the weather was hot as refrigeration was not commonly accessible within schools.

Depending on events occurring at school, children described how they would adjust the amount of food packed to meet predicted hunger levels. For example, Mia described packing more into her lunchbox on sports days when she knew her energy expenditure would be increased.

Once packed, lunchboxes were used to transport food to school, forming the practice connection, and typically stored in children’s school bags until mealtimes for consumption.

Children also described how bundles formed between lunchbox preparation and consumption practices and other everyday practices. As packing the school lunchbox was performed in kitchens and required children as bodily materials, this practice conflicted with sleep, active play and passive leisure activities, including morning routines of getting ready for school. Within these conflicting bundles, the dominance of practices differed and was typically guided by whether or not another person was available to perform the practice. For example, children stopped playing to pack lunchboxes when parents could or would not, as Owen and Zoes described.

This compared to play being prioritised, and thus dominating, when parents were available and willing to pack the lunchbox.

As previously described, food consumption at school could be harmonious with socialisation practices and passive leisure activities; however, it conflicted with active play and socialisation, which was occasionally distracting for children within this setting.

Overall, a pattern emerged where children’s food practices were seen to be consistently embedded within broader everyday practice bundles, demonstrating that children’s food practices cannot be fully understood without examining their relationship with other practices. Recurrent harmonious bundles were formed between food practices and socialisation and learning, whereas conflicting bundles formed between food practices and active play. Connections were formed through shared practice elements, particularly materials (namely food and the body) and meanings.

Through privileging children’s perspectives, this study was able to present how children’s everyday food practices interacted with one another as well as other practices throughout the spaces they occupied. Children described how various food practices connected to form co-dependent sequences and interacted with other practices either as harmonious or conflicting bundles in time and space. This adds to the existing research into children’s perspectives of their food practices, which have typically focused on food consumption, with some literature around children’s engagement with cooking (for example, Martin Romero and Francis, 2020; Olfert et al., 2019) and food shopping (for example, Castro et al., 2021; Monalisa et al., 2023). Further, in most cases children’s perspectives of these food practices have tended to be investigated as siloed events within specific settings, such as homes (Martin Romero and Francis, 2020), schools (Maiz et al., 2021), supermarkets (Castro et al., 2021) or corner stores (Sherman et al., 2015). The application of social practice theory within the current study was able to convey how children’s food practices interconnect and are integrated within and shaped by a wider constellation of practices across their everyday lives. Overall, this study contributes a holistic conceptualisation of children’s food systems, with implications for designing interventions that recognise the interconnected nature of food and other practices within children’s everyday worlds. Implications of this research are summarised in Table 2.

The way in which connections between children’s everyday practices are presented may be best conceptualised using two of the typologies from Hui et al. (2016), “threading through” and “suffusing”. “Threading through” connections are more visible, tangible and traceable occurrences and therefore typically attributed to material elements transported between practices (for example, food), as well as practices themselves (for example, transport practices). “Suffusing” connections, on the other hand, are often less visible, dispersed and intangible, conveyed in this study through elements of shared meanings (for example, commensality and enjoyment) and simultaneous competence (i.e. knowledge and skills) across practices. Through children’s descriptions of their food practices, the school lunchbox could be identified as an object “threading through” preparation and consumption practices, conveying how practice elements may transport between spaces (i.e. the home and the school), shaping the practice performance within each setting (Hui et al., 2016; Shove et al., 2012). These findings echo adult-constructed commentary of how the private food worlds of children and their families are publicly observed, judged and governed via the school lunchbox (Metcalfe et al., 2008; Cappellini et al., 2018). Tracing this connection from the child’s viewpoint may provide a deeper understanding of how the context of schools as a social site infiltrates the home environment (i.e. rules, other peers, infrastructure), and how the context of the home environment impacts what is brought to school and consumed (i.e. parental influence, foods available).

Further, through centralising practices, rather than children as practitioners, this study was able to convey how food as a material object “threaded through” practices to create co-dependent sequences where food practices further along the sequence arose as food was produced by preceding practices (Hui et al., 2016; Shove et al., 2012). In this case, food practices such as consumption could not have been performed without food being produced or appropriately shaped during prior practices. Understanding the co-dependent nature of food practices highlights the need to account for preceding “upstream” food practices when attempting to shape “downstream” performances, as well as the impact of other conflicting practices that may capture the resources necessary to perform food practices.

The interaction of children’s food and other everyday practices observed in this article has been witnessed by adult researchers observing children, namely in schools at time-limited break times, where a raft of food consumption, socialisation and play practices are enacted (Mason, 2020; Berggren et al., 2020; Baines and MacIntyre, 2022). Within the current article, the practice-theoretical concept of “bundling”, for example, play and socialisation as both competing and in harmony with food practices, may provide a tangible construct to assist in explaining how and why everyday practices occur, why some dominate over others and how to reproduce or disrupt the connections between them (Olstad and Kirkpatrick, 2021). Practice theory suggests that for the relationships between practices to be maintained, the connections between them require constant reproduction and that practices may dominate when linkages are firmly embedded within the everyday landscape of children’s lives (Shove et al., 2012). In this study, children’s descriptions of when their everyday practices conflicted revealed how dominating practices tended to have prioritised meanings (for example, enjoyment or commensality), allowing them to capture necessary materials (for example, the body) from recessive (i.e. non-dominant) practices, particularly in time-constrained circumstances. Conflict between practices was emphasised when the necessary competence was not available to perform each practice simultaneously. Thus adding richer data to that already gathered from adults’ observations. Through employing a practice-theoretical lens, the current study was able to convey how governance mechanisms that allotted dedicated time for eating and play within schools were effective at reducing competition between them. While this may be a suitable option for some practices, it may not always be appropriate or effective.

Understanding how practices become dominant and subsequently shape recessive practices may inform where food practices are more likely to succeed. One such method may be integrating typically recessive food practices into harmonious bundles with typically dominant practices, rather than attempting to compete with or make dominant practices disappear. For example, when trying to encourage children to consume breakfast in the morning, bundling food consumption with transport practices to school rather than as a competing practice with getting ready may be successful. Shared meanings and competence to perform practices simultaneously may further support harmonious bundling. For example, children learning and food practices are described as harmoniously bundling when practice elements are integrated, such as learning to budget within food shopping practices. These findings may subsequently highlight where intersectoral partnerships may successfully form and become mutually beneficial, such as sectors aiming to increase general literacy and those aiming to increase food literacy (Love et al., 2020).

Although the presence of adult researchers and the university as an institution likely created unequal power dynamics with children and their families, mitigating strategies were implemented, such as developmentally appropriate, fun and engaging resources and research tasks. These were complemented by locating interviews in children’s spaces, such as their homes, or neutral locations such as community libraries that children had previously visited.

Practices, the connections between them and the cohorts of practitioners performing practices constantly change over time and place. As such, the results of this study are relevant to the specific cohort that participated and the time at which data were collected. Further, the way in which the everyday practices of children were collected was not able to fully convey the subconscious nature of practices, elements of practices or overlapping configurations within their lives. The sample included in this study was likely biased towards being more interested, competent and involved in food practices and may have been more reflective of harmonious and conflicting situations in relation to everyday food practices. Thus, research located within a diversity of socio-cultural cohorts and contexts replicating these processes is encouraged to understand varying practice connections, where longitudinal studies may give great insight into why specific practices become embedded in children’s food worlds and dominate while others disappear. This empirical exploration of children’s food practices may add detail to adult-constructed theoretical frameworks (such as Castelo et al., 2021) to advance future investigations.

This study, grounded in practice-theoretical constructs, was able to present how children’s food practices interconnect and interact with other everyday practices, thus expanding current conceptualisations of children’s food worlds to account for the broader context of their everyday lives and the practices that shape them. Exploring the connections between children’s food practices and other everyday practices provided insight into how elements (i.e. materials, meanings and competence) are captured by dominant practices and subsequently shape recessive practices. This knowledge may inform where food intervention efforts targeting children and families are more likely to succeed, such as integrating typically recessive food practices into harmonious bundles with typically dominant practices. Further, uncovering the co-dependent nature of food practices highlights how preceding “upstream” food practices need to be considered when attempting to shape “downstream” performances. There are many ways in which this knowledge may be used, including where efforts for intersectoral partnerships between health, education and other professionals may be emphasised for optimising children’s engagement within interventions targeting their food practices.

We would like to thank our participants for taking part in the study and their families for their support.

The supplementary material for this article can be found online.