Students: To eat better, consider exploring your city!
Between budget constraints, practical challenges, and geographical limitations, it’s not easy for students to eat healthily. How can we turn things around and develop healthy habits? Here’s a look at a field study involving young people, local authorities, and university stakeholders.
Karine Garcia, University of Montpellier; Andréa Gourmelen, University of Montpellier; Angélique RODHAIN, University of Montpellier and Josselin Masson, University of Montpellier
At the start of each academic year, many students leave their family homes to move closer to their university or school.
While living apart from one’s parents does not necessarily mean financial independence and often happens gradually, it does require managing one’s own meals independently. This is a major challenge, with short-term implications for their academic performance and long-term implications for their health.
In an environment where junk food is readily available, how can students manage to eat healthily? Based on interviews with students living away from home, local professionals, and representatives from the CROUS, as well as field observations in a college town, here are some insights.
Eating well as a student: a path fraught with challenges
Students face many challenges when it comes to eating well.
Financial pressures continue to mount, leading some of them to cut back on food expenses or even turn to food assistance.
The constraints are also geographical and time-related, with the two being interconnected. In the absence of options that meet their expectations and fit their budget, students are often forced to seek out stores that are far away. The trips to get to the grocery store of their choice can be long (in terms of distance and time) and require complicated planning (carpooling, public transportation). Access to efficient public transportation becomes essential, especially for those without a vehicle.
In addition, practical constraints (a small refrigerator, a kitchen equipped with only the bare essentials, and a lack of storage space) encourage students to limit their purchases of fresh food and shop more frequently. Finally, there are also cognitive constraints. Some students report that they lack the knowledge to distinguish between healthy and less healthy products.
To mitigate these challenges, the ideal solution would be to have access to healthy food options nearby. However, student neighborhoods are often areas where fast-food restaurants and convenience stores—which do not carry fruits and vegetables—outnumber healthy food options. This phenomenon is referred to as a “food desert.”
Student neighborhoods: a veritable food wasteland
Our study focused on the food options available within a 15-minute walk of the homes of the students we interviewed. We first identified and surveyed the existing establishments. We then interviewed the students to assess their perceptions and eating habits.
Only university dining halls are seen as offering balanced meals at an affordable price in the local area. However, the growing lines since the introduction of the €1 meal for scholarship recipients have made it harder for them to access these meals.
Does the food service industry consist mainly of fast-food outlets (burgers, kebabs, pizza, sandwich shops, tacos, etc.) or a few traditional restaurants that are not well-suited to students’ budgets? Furthermore, few universities provide spaces where students can bring their own homemade meals. All of these factors push students to turn to the unhealthy food options that are proliferating in their neighborhoods and around campuses.
When it comes to grocery shopping, students associate small stores with high prices. While their perceptions are largely accurate in some cases, they can also be exaggerated. Observations confirm that healthy and affordable options near campuses are not easy to find. Small shops and specialty stores, such as butcher shops near student housing, are therefore systematically avoided or reserved for very occasional purchases. “Big grocery runs” are done on a weekly or monthly basis at stores further away (discounters or hypermarkets).
The interviews reveal that students are unfamiliar with local food systems and farmers’ markets. While they understand the concept, they do not know how to actually get there, even though there are several such markets in the neighborhoods studied.
Therefore, students who want to eat healthily on their own should make the effort and take the time to explore their neighborhood.
One way to eat well while living on your own: Explore your city!
Our study identified four distinct student profiles based on two factors: interest in healthy eating (and the skills and knowledge they have acquired in this area) and interest in the city (and the knowledge they have developed regarding its organization, transportation, and amenities). Each profile is associated with a primary food procurement strategy.
The strategies adopted are, of course, linked to other factors, with students’ budgets being the most important. In our survey, students who rely primarily on food aid and CROUS meals seek above all to limit their expenses. For most of them, this is because they are in a precarious financial situation. For others, it is a matter of limiting food expenses in order to treat themselves to other pleasures in an area that interests them more.
Living far from home is another important factor, as only students who regularly return to their family home can rely on their parents for food. While parents, by bringing groceries and providing airtight containers for the week, certainly ensure that their children eat properly, they effectively hinder their children’s independence when it comes to food.
It is therefore not easy for students living away from home to eat a healthy diet. Aside from regular food supplies from home, they must make an effort to acquire both the knowledge and skills related to food, as well as those related to their college town.
How can we encourage students to eat healthier in the cities where they study?
Cities, which benefit from having students in their communities, must now reflect on and take action to meet their needs. Assessments of food offerings in student neighborhoods would allow, based on the data collected, for targeted initiatives with food retailers—such as raising awareness about healthy eating, providing marketing training to improve their understanding of the student demographic, and offering support to help them promote healthy choices (financial incentives, visual aids) to students.
Short supply chains and farmers’ markets should also be highlighted in communications to make them more visible to students. An orientation day for new students in the city could be organized to share “tips for healthy eating,” with a financial incentive—such as a discount or gift card—as an added bonus.
Students’ daily routes in cities must also be analyzed to identify key transit points (tram or bus stops, etc.) and set up mobile food stands there to make it a routine part of their day to buy fruits and vegetables, soups, fresh juices, or salads instead of snacking. Beyond that, the overall appeal of student neighborhoods must also be reimagined so that food shopping can be done easily and enjoyably as part of their daily routines.
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We recommend that students explore their neighborhood and city as soon as possible to find healthy food options. City websites and apps will help them locate farmers’ markets, organic grocery stores, and local events related to healthy eating. The city’s Instagram page should also be full of information to help them get familiar with local food options. The university’s student life office, as well as student organizations focused on environmental sustainability, are also valuable resources for learning about support available for adopting a healthy and affordable diet.
Finally, once some of them have become fully independent, they can serve as ambassadors by sharing tips on healthy eating with their peers. Ultimately, after a few months of practice, they will have developed crucial skills such as budget management, decision-making, organizational skills, and a touch of creativity.
Karine Garcia, Associate Professor of Management Sciences (Marketing), University of Montpellier; Andréa Gourmelen, Associate Professor (HDR) in Management Sciences (Marketing), University of Montpellier; Angélique RODHAIN, Associate Professor – HDR in Management (Marketing), University of Montpellier and Josselin Masson, Associate Professor in Marketing, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.