Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To investigate dietary health understandings, healthy foods access perceptions and the main sources of nutritional knowledge of residents in three urban communities of varying socio-economic make-up. DESIGN: An ethnographic approach to primary qualitative data collection, involving frequent visits to study areas over 4 months and in-depth interviews. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed through an iterative approach. SETTING: Yogyakarta, Indonesia. PARTICIPANTS: A purposive sample of 45 participants divided equally among the 3 communities. Participants were mostly female (93 %), aged between 27 and 75 years (mean 47·7) and largely identified as the person responsible for household food-related decisions (93 %). RESULTS: Three overarching themes emerged: (i) dietary health understandings; (ii) healthy foods access perceptions and (iii) sources of nutritional knowledge. Participants employed multifaceted conceptualisation of dietary health. Most identified healthy foods with traditional plant-based foods, inexpensive and locally available from multiple sources. Thus, all participants perceived healthy foods as highly available in the local environment and most (80 %) as affordable. Reported affordability issues referred to specific foods (particularly animal source products) and were independent of income levels. Participants acquired nutritional knowledge from multiple sources, including many community-based initiatives. These were overall perceived as useful, but also as presenting some limitations. CONCLUSIONS: The variety in dietary health understandings reported by study participants, and their high perceptions of healthy foods availability in the local environment reinforce the idea that individual- and food environment-level determinants of nutritional behaviours are highly contextual.