Urbanization, complex urban infrastructural change, and rural–urban migration are transforming food consumption practices in cities in the Global South (Karamba et al., 2011; Adeosun et al., 2022a). One key change in food consumption brought about by these dynamics is the shift from home-based to out-of-home food consumption, particularly among the urban poor (Piaseu and Mitchell, 2004; Tsuchiya et al., 2017). In many developing countries like Nigeria, ready-to-eat food vending has expanded tremendously (Adeosun et al., 2022b). This has raised concerns about poor urban dwellers who disproportionally depend on out-of-home food outlets, for whom food insecurity intersects with multiple other challenges in daily life, such as inadequate housing and long working hours in informal jobs (Adeosun et al., 2022a). These developments suggest that out-of-home food consumption will continue to grow and this trend has a range of consequences. Recent research reveals that changes in daily practices such as mobility, work, and family life associated with socio-economic transformations in urban settings have contributed to increasing out-of-home food consumption (Thornton et al., 2013; Adeosun et al., 2022a). In response, out-of-home food provisioning is expected to align more along these situational dynamics to ensure the food security of the concerned groups consumers.

Despite their increasing reliance on out-of-home food, low-income consumers do not have absolute control over the kinds of foods and the composition of meals provisioned by food vendors, so their out-of-home food intake is limited to what these vendors provide. However, the kinds of food provisioned intersect with different dynamic activities happening within the food vending environment. This includes location specific activities such as of the employment context of consumers, the period of the day that food is being provisioned and the mobility dynamics of food vendors (Adeosun et al., 2022a,b). More so, research shows that even though food vendors are aware of nutrition imbalances in current food provisioned, profit-making takes priority in selecting the food they offer (Githiri et al., 2016; McKay et al., 2016; Adeosun et al., 2022b). Furthermore, the tendency for most out-of-home food consumers to stick to a particular food vendor they trust in terms of factors such as hygiene, food safety and sometimes the perceived satiety and energy the food provides, rather than the food’s nutritional benefits (Adeosun et al., 2022a), increases the likelihood of them consuming mostly monotonous diets. Even though some food vendors offer different food groups, some are provided and consumed in small quantities only (Adeosun et al., 2022b). Despite multiple benefits attributable to the intake of fruit and vegetables in daily diets, poor consumers still eat below the usual recommendation by (WHO, 2003). In most poor households in developing countries, Nigeria included, the consumption of fruits and vegetables is far below the minimum recommended level of 400 g per capita per day (WHO, 2003; Ruel et al., 2004; Lee, 2016).

Given these trends, it is therefore critical to consider how out-of-home food can be improved to enable consumers to access healthy and adequate diets. This study conceptualizes healthy food in a way that departs from a focus on individual choice alone to direct attention to the contexts of provisioning and consumption that shape whether and how consumers can access a diverse diet that includes a variety of food items and fruits and vegetables (WHO, 2015). In directing attention to the contexts of food provisioning and consumption, the paper investigates practice-oriented strategies and mechanisms that can aid improving the health and balance of ready-to-eat food.

Most studies on ready-to-eat food provisioning have until now focused on food handling practices, food hygiene, provision of high-calorie foods, and monotonous menu settings (Mwangi et al., 2002; Story et al., 2008; Muyanja et al., 2011; Lucan et al., 2014; Kolady et al., 2020; Adeosun et al., 2022b). However, it remains unclear how these interconnections and intersections of practices can aid the improvement of food vending practices in terms of the health and diversity of the ready-to-eat foods provisioned. In this research the study conceptualizes health and diversity of ready-to-eat food as two distinct aspects of obtaining an adequate diet through: (1) the integration of fruits and vegetables into menu settings and meals and (2) increasing the diversity of food groups provisioned.

In addressing this aim, the study builds on previous research on informal food vending in the Global South and in particular in Nigeria (Chukuezi, 2010; Leshi and Leshi, 2017; Dai et al., 2019; Kazembe et al., 2019; Resnick et al., 2019; Swai, 2019; Tawodzera, 2019; Wegerif, 2020; Zhong and Scott, 2020; Adeosun et al., 2022a,b). In doing so, this study adopts a social practice-oriented approach using participatory back-casting methods (Davies and Doyle, 2015; Oomen et al., 2022; Van der Gaast et al., 2022) to unpack practices, strategies and mechanisms suitable for improving food diversity in ready-to-eat food vending practices among the urban poor. A study by Davies and Doyle (2015) confirmed that only few studies in the domain of food vending apply back-casting using everyday social practices as their unit of analysis. Welch et al. (2020) studied the connections between social practices and regimes of engagement to understand future practices. Some studies applied visioning and back-casting in studying food futures in the Global North (Quist et al., 2011; Mangnus et al., 2019). For instance, Van der Gaast et al. (2022) employ social practice and future engagements in food entrepreneurship to understand possible transformations toward a sustainable food system. However, while the use of futuring and visioning methods has somewhat increased in food consumption research in the Global North, there is a lack of applying such methods in food studies in the Global South. This paper intends to fill this gap.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: section two outlines the conceptual-methodological framing underpinning of study. In section three, we present the study context and the methods used to collect and analyze the data. Section four reports the findings from the study, which are discussed in section five to arrive at a conclusion on the implications of the insights generated for urban food system research and out-of-home food policy.

This paper aimed to understand future strategies and mechanisms that can contribute to improved food vending practices in the contexts of health and diversity of food provisioned. Taking a nuanced approach the study analyzed different interconnections and interactions of practices, (sub) practices, elements of practices, and elements of governance that can support the future improvement of food vending practices. The study presents the findings under the following headings: first, the study analyzes the views of food practitioners (vending and consumption) on the benefits of increased health and diversity of food provisioned. This is followed by the expected future strategies. Different suggestions were made on practice-oriented mechanisms, including learning practice meanings, norms, competences and materials, as well as reshaping links and synergies among different food markets within the food vending environment and establishing more effective and efficient regulatory frameworks guiding food vending practices. The last section of the results is based on the envisioned challenges and implementation process.

The study presents deeper insight into how informal food vending practices can be improved to deliver healthy and diverse foods to the urban poor. The study presents its findings to corroborate with existing literature on identifying practice-oriented processes that can enable/engineer solutions to multiple challenges and shortcomings of ready-to-eat food vending practices in the Global South (Mattioni et al., 2020; Adeosun et al., 2022b; Bezares et al., 2023). Being the most commonly used food provisioning outlet among the urban poor (Mwangi et al., 2002; Steyn et al., 2014), ready-to-eat food vending is an important food supply channel through which to focus attention in efforts to achieve healthy and diverse food systems. This study takes a practice-centered participatory back-casting methodological approach to explore mechanisms, strategies, and empirical information that can aid the improvement of urban food vending practices.

Our methodology and practice-oriented approach enabled us to analyze the “future in the present,” and provided an analytical framework to understand the improvement of food vending practices. In doing so, we have responded to the call by Van der Gaast et al. (2022) for more research on the interactions between near and distant futures in different contexts and circumstances. Our approach deviated somewhat from the usual application of visioning and back-casting by implementing both into a process that involved two stages of visioning combined with one stage of back-casting. Previous studies have employed back-casting and visioning approach to other situational dynamics (Bibri and Krogstie, 2019; González-González et al., 2019; Sisto et al., 2020; Soria-Lara et al., 2021; Villman, 2021) but none has been applied in the study of informal ready-to-eat food vending. The application of our method of two-staged visioning and back-casting may also be applied to analyze challenges and solutions for other components of the food system in the Global South.

The results from mapping the food vending environment indicate that out-of-home food provisioning has expanded and continues to expand in the food landscape. These observations underline the importance of food vending for the food security of the urban poor. This agrees with the findings of Swai (2019) and Tawodzera (2019) that street food vending is expanding and serving most people food needs in the city of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and Cape town, respectively. Most out-of-home consumers depend on street foods for at least one to two of their daily meals and they patronize food vendors for their daily meals regularly (Ogundari et al., 2015). This implies that any transformation toward improving food vending will directly benefit the urban poor consumers.

First, we analyzed the perspective different stakeholders have on the prospects of food vending and we found that there is wide agreement that transformations in the food vending sector are overdue and necessary to adequately meet the nutritional needs of consumers. According to Mwangi et al. (2002), a high proportion of food vendors do not sell food that is sufficiently diverse for a healthy diet. If consumers have access to and consume an adequate diet, this will be reflected in their health. According to Branca et al. (2019), transforming the food system can contribute to reducing non-communicable diseases. This study found that this transformation should entail two initiatives: (i) the increased consumption of fruits and vegetables and (ii) access to more diverse diets that include a broader range of the different food groups. The stakeholders reported that it is important that fruits and vegetables are integrated into meals sold in the food outlets rather than servicing them as separate meals. This is also important as WHO (2015) recommended that 400 g of fruits and vegetable should be consumed per day. This way, low-income consumers can have access to a portable meal with fruits and vegetables as well as an adequate diet at affordable prices. However, the stakeholders suggest that more is needed for these initiatives to be successful. Both food vendors and consumers should be made more aware and sensitized on the competencies that are needed for the success of these initiatives. According to Panicker and Priya (2020) street vending can supply healthy and nutritious food to consumers if it is well organized.

Extant literature further indicates that some out-of-home food consumers prefer to eat food that has high satiety value, can fill their stomachs quickly and enable them to withstand their often physically intense daily jobs with a consequence that they ignore healthy foods (Adeosun et al., 2022a). However, consumers should be encouraged to seek food that can suits their physical demands as well as provide enough nutrients, i.e., an adequate diet. Even though consumers follow their normal food routines, changes in a practice they are connected to can change the actual food they consume. Since, food consumption practices are interconnected with food vending practices (Adeosun et al., 2022a), transforming food vending practices can lead to changing food consumption practices.

Second, the starting point in transforming food vending practices should be a focus on changing food norms and practices through training-related activities supported by the government and food vending association leaders. NGOs aiming for increasing the consumption of healthy foods should also be carried along in implementing the initiatives. Training of food vendors centered on the know-how of the necessary skills and competencies and material resources usage required to execute the initiatives is indispensable. The stakeholders suggested that such training should be organized by the government with the collaboration of the food vending association leaders. This suggestion is in line with insights from research that highlight mutual understanding between the government and food vending association leaders on organizing training for food vendors (Zhong et al., 2019).

Third, the study analyzed different elements that are integrated to form the social practice of ready-to-eat food vending. Seeking to transform these, existing practice-elements and activities may need to be adjusted, changed, or supplemented. From our findings, adjusting practice-elements and processes that include skills, material resources, and capital are considered essential for the implementation of the initiatives. Buying additional food raw materials, kitchen utensils, other food preparatory materials and effective storage facilities will be needed to accommodate more food materials to be stored and ensure they are prevented from being spoiled and eaten by rodents. In addition, the initiatives will require more capital as they have to buy additional food and other materials. The study suggested that such capital can come via soft loans from the government as a special package for these initiatives. NGOs can also provide financial support to food vendors. From our findings, confirming Herrero et al. (2020), it can be inferred that transforming food vending components of the food system involves the re-integration of key practice-elements such as procurement of raw food materials, storage facilities, food preparation and presentation, stocking, and re-stocking.

Fourth, the study analyzed how interconnections between food vending and governing practices can support the implementation of the initiatives. We found that governing practices can drive changes in food vending practices. The government should play this role in conjunction with food vending association leaders. This is because food vendors trust and listen to their leaders more than to government staff. This implies that for formal actions to be effective in informal settings, the stakeholders of the informal settings need to be included from the start of the discussions. According to Vermeulen et al. (2020) bottom-up and top-down approaches to dietary and food system transformations should be complementary. The study also suggested that past intervention strategies in food vending in the area of food safety and hygiene practices can be built on for the implementation of the initiatives.

In conclusion, transforming food vending practices to increase the diversity of food groups provisioned and the integrations of fruits and vegetables in meals, involves the integration of practice-elements, interconnection of practices, and interconnections with governing practices. The study identified several key food vending practice-elements and elements of governance that need transforming. Specifically, adjustments in the procurement of raw food materials, food preparation and presentation, storage, and stocking strategies will enable the realization of the initiatives. Furthermore, key governance elements, including monitoring, supervision, coordination, and steering in collaboration with food vending association leaders will facilitate the implementation of the initiatives. Our findings also provide some insights for policymakers to support the improvement of food vending practices. The study recommends further research on understanding consumers’ receptiveness toward an increase in the diversity of foods provisioned by informal food vending.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

KA, MG, and PO conceived and designed the paper and wrote the paper. KA collected and analyzed the data. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The research was funded by Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) as part of Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) project under the interdisciplinary project: Food Systems for Healthier Diets (FSHD).

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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