Conceptualizing the Digital Food Environment: A Framework

Food environments are important determinants of food choice and consumption and, consequently, drivers of global health and nutrition challenges such as obesity and noncommunicable diseases. These challenges are intensified by the ubiquitous presence of digital technology, which affects food practices. The goal of this study was to develop a middle‐range theory for understanding the digital food environment in late modernity. We conducted a critical realist grounded theory study based on elicited data (from semi‐structured interviews and observation of digital platforms, tools, and services) and extant data (from interdisciplinary scientific literature). We conceptualize the digital food environment as an augmented space where social and material food practices take place, mediated, enhanced, enabled, or replaced by digital technology, influencing food consumption and impacting nutrition, health, and equity. Our proposed model represents the digital food environment as a socially co‐produced space, where the interplay between structure and agency shapes food practices, driven by late modern processes such as digitalization, informationalism, individualization, commercialization, and exposure amplification. The digital food environment has a governance model where technology companies, digital content creators, and non‐human agents are key actors, increasing the complexity of food practices and power asymmetries that affect food choice, consumption patterns, and health narratives. Policies to promote healthy food environments must consider their increasingly digitalized nature.