Table 3.

Food availability and accessibility within the neighbourhood food environment.

Sub-theme 1: Food availability
Food quality, display, appearance and taste
Accra	‘Also she keeps the place neat and she is selling the food in a glass to prevent flies contaminating the food. The food items are well placed in neat container and package leaves are well cleaned. So these are the reasons why I like to buy my food there.’ [Male, 60 years, lowest SES, Accra, A24]
Ho	‘The reason I took a picture of this place, this shows that all the things that the woman sells has to show, it is good, that is why I took it. The whole place shows the bowls, the spoons, and the pepper’ [Female, 43 years, lowest SES, H3]
Nairobi	‘when something is displayed nicely it attracts you then also when you look at the person you see that he is presentable you get the appetite for eating’ [Male, 52 years, lowest SES, N39]
Facilities and services
Accra	‘Some sellers use the same spoons for everyone whilst others use disposable spoons so I prefer those who use the disposable spoons. Furthermore, how they wash their dishes is also of importance to me. Some of them do not change the water they use to wash dishes even when the water becomes dirty. I do not go to such places. I have not had any issues with her food since I started eating there and she keeps the place very neat. She has soap and water to wash your hands after eating and napkins to clean your hands as well as tissues’ [Male, 17 years, lowest SES, A14]
Sub-theme 2: Food accessibility
Physical access and convenience
Accra	‘She is close to my house. I spend only 2 s to get there and buy the food. A lot of people buy the food and her food is always hot and nice … Yes they start from 4pm to 9pm. It is sold directly opposite my house … it is a really short distance from me.’ [Female, 14 years, lowest SES, A41]
Ho	‘To go and get food to come and eat becomes an issue, because the road is too long to go and get food and come and eat … I find it difficult to eat since the road is long … if I want to eat rice, I have to get to the market to buy it. The market too is far from where I am … going to the market makes it better, because I can get it cheaper there.’ [Female, 30 years, low to middle SES, H10]
Nairobi	‘This is the only that sells these things near here because those other ones are far. So since, let's say this one is alone is what influences us because even if you want to eat another thing, if this one does not have, you will have to change by force, in that you are forced to change to eat the thing that is in that shop because what you want is not available.’ [Female, 18 years, lowest SES, N7]
Economic access
Accra	‘ … the cost is high and I would rather use the 2 cedis to buy banku and fish and drink a lot of water and that could take me for the whole day as I explain to you previously. You see, I need the fruit but because of the cost, I cannot afford using my 2 cedis to buy apple. Fruit is good for us but the prices do change depending on whether they are in season or not and because of that we cannot buy fruits at higher prices’ [Female, 32 years, low to middle SES, A34]
Accra	‘Things are expensive now on the market and you cannot take 10 cedis to the market to buy things needed for food. You need about 50 to 100 cedis and since I don't have that money, it makes eating difficult for me. So not having money makes eating healthy food difficult for me.’ [Female, 39 years, low to middle SES, Accra, A36]
Ho	‘There are times, when there is no money, we can just grind pepper and eat it raw like that. Or because there is no money, from morning or we will wait till afternoon before eating. We won't eat in the morning because the food is not much so if we eat in the morning, there won't be enough for the afternoon, and there is no money to go and buy some food.’ [Female, 24 years, lowest SES, Ho, H1] ‘Okay, with money, when you have it then you can buy something to cook at home, and when you cook it, you can get some health from it. But if you don't have money, and you go to the roadside to buy something, let's say you have 1 cedi, that cedi cannot buy anything for you to cook at home, but you can use the 1 cedi to buy something on the roadside, and people do not take care of how they cook their food, when you eat, you can fall sick. So when you have money and you buy the foodstuff and cook at home, you will have nothing to worry about with regards to your health. So money is needed, everywhere.’ [Female, 24 years, lowest SES, Ho, H1]
Nairobi	‘Meat it is something for luxury even if it is good to the body but it is so expensive you cannot eat it every day, once a week.’ [Male, 72 years, low to middle SES, N26]