Research and policy on children’s food consumption commonly highlights
the unequal impact of obesogenic environments on their health. Yet
obesogenic theories risk pathologising certain communities, when
assuming fixed relationships between ‘unhealthy’ environments and
‘obese’ bodies, and neglecting children’s multi-layered relationships to
food and health. Drawing on participatory photomapping with 11–12-
year-old girls in an urban Irish working-class neighbourhood, this study
conceptualises children’s food environments as dynamic, regulatory
assemblages which involve multi-layered ‘pushes and pulls’ of ‘healthy’
and ‘unhealthy’ foods, experiences and norms. Such foods, experiences
and norms are related to in a variety of ways in the girls’ negotiation of
belonging, bargain-hunting and body-shaming. The analysis challenges
fixed, binary, adult-centred, classed and gendered ideas about healthy/
unhealthy child bodies, foods and environments. We argue that viewing
food environments as assemblages invites ‘obesogenic’ policy and
research to inclusively engage children’s dynamic and multi-layered
capacities to act, feel and desire around food.