Adolescents’ interactions with their food environment in Vietnam: A participatory video-based study on factors shaping dietary behavior

Background: Adolescence is a critical life stage, marked by increasing personal autonomy and peer influence. Food environments encompass the availability, accessibility, and appeal of food options. Exposure to food environments dominated by unhealthy and unsustainable food options can reinforce poor dietary habits with lasting impacts on adolescents' nutrition and health. In rapidly changing food environments, as in Vietnam, it is critical to understand how adolescents navigate their food environments. Objectives: This study used a participatory action-research videomaking approach to explore how adolescents in Vietnam perceive and interact with their food environment. Methods: In total, 52 adolescents (26 boys and 26 girls) aged 15 to 17 y from urban, peri-urban, and rural settings participated to create 7 interactive videos portraying their immediate food environments. Content analysis of the videos and the workshop transcripts was conducted, combining deductive and inductive coding in MAXQDA 24 data analysis software. Results: Adolescents reported a diverse range of food outlets near their homes and schools, supplying a combination of fresh, locally sourced foods alongside packaged, processed, and ultraprocessed foods. Their choices of food outlet and product were shaped primarily by affordability, outlet proximity, and time constraints, with additional influences shaped by social media, taste, trendiness, novelty, popularity, and familiarity. Conclusions: Our findings underscore the importance of adopting multilevel strategies that enhance the accessibility, affordability, appeal, and convenience of nutritious foods, particularly near schools. Strategies should include strengthening adolescents' capacity to understand food labels and critically evaluate food marketing to make informed decisions, and regulating the marketing of unhealthy food products, particularly in and around schools and on digital platforms. Empowering adolescents as active participants in shaping their food environments offers promising pathways toward improved diet quality and nutrition outcomes. Further research is needed to better understand the complex and rapidly changing food landscapes that Vietnamese adolescents navigate.