Table 1. Full list of themes arising from data analysis.

Themes are shown with illustrative quotes and associated domains.

Theme	Domain	Quote
Cooking Fuel	Economic Health Sociocultural	‘There, that picture shows the charcoal stove that is used when we have no firewood for cooking, we set fire using charcoal in the stove as an alternative.’
Diet	Economic Health Sociocultural	‘Sometimes when one is hungry we just eat them (bananas) directly from the garden as we can see the fruits hung up…we cut bananas and make breakfast out of them, locally called makata and sometimes we store them until they are ripe.’
Food availability	Economic Health	‘Food is never scarce this time due to rains. The fields have okrah which we can cook for relish.’
Food Hygiene	Economic Health	‘You can see this is unprotected salad we normally consume when we want to buy chips…flies can contaminate food and cause diseases.’
Food preparation	Sociocultural	‘We detach them (Msangu tree leaves) and put them in a winnower then set fire and put some water until they boil. While the water is boiling, we pound some groundnuts as I am doing here.’
Food purchase and trade	Economic Sociocultural	‘This is the first picture, some of the people around here are fishermen, they usually walk around the village with the fish we buy from them using the money we get from piece-works. Secondly, these fishermen catch and sell the fish in order to find money for their day to day lives.’
Growing food	Economic Sociocultural	‘This is our new type of farming because most of the times the fields where we farm here in Mlinga village are on a distance so we thought of a small garden around our home to grow vegetables for food.’
Sharing of food	Sociocultural	‘Most of the times the people who are around are kids. We sometimes share food with them when they are coming from school while their parents are at farms.’
Waste disposal	Economic Health	‘This is tomato and a bin. Instead of disposing in a bin, they have carelessly disposed it, which is unclean as seen from this picture, an act that is not acceptable.’
Water safety	Health	‘We used to collect water from the Shire River which was an unsafe practice that was causing a lot of diseases in our family. After they installed tap water, I can say things have improved. We have been using safe water for cooking and washing.’