A new study from the University of Waterloo on food insecurity among students shows that there’s a need to challenge the “starving student” ideology which normalizes the lack of access to healthy food during post-secondary studies.
The study found that students normalized experiences of food insecurity as typical of post-secondary education.
In contrast, they expressed anxiety and frustration with financial inaccessibility to healthy food, and described negative implications for their physical and mental health, and their ability to perform well in school, according to the study.
Merryn Maynard, the program operations co-ordinator for Meal Exchange, a charity that focuses on supporting students who are experiencing food insecurity, co-authored the study. She said she conducted the study as a graduate student at Waterloo, which also interviewed 14 students.
She said the students who said they experienced food insecurity were in various programs and from diverse backgrounds. While most of the students reported not having major health issues, they also reported having poor physical health, such as hunger, fatigue, and changes in weight.
“The thing that really stood out for me when I was talking to students that experienced this, was there’s sort of this conflicting messaging of being a starving student is perfectly normal,” Maynard said.
“There was anxiety and worry over the fact they were running out of money for food,” she said. “They were engaging in all sorts of strategies to cope with their situation.”
For example, one student changed sleep patterns to miss breakfast, others skipping meals among other experiences.
“When I probed a little bit, some of those physical health pieces definitely came out, which to me sort of indicates that they’re trying to find ways to rationalize it within their own minds,” she said.
According to the study, students normalized the experience by thinking that they simply needed to adapt to their financial circumstances.
Maynard said she became interested in food insecurity growing up in Hamilton, but really noticed its seriousness while volunteering at the school food bank. She noticed students there getting food were physically uncomfortable. She was also taken aback by the diversity of students using the food bank.
“It’s not like you could pinpoint somebody on campus and say ‘Oh, they’re experiencing food insecurity—they’re someone who accesses the food bank’,” Maynard said. “It was like all sorts of different people in different stages of life, from different backgrounds.”
“And all of them were sort of united by this common experience of ‘Oh, my gosh, my fridge is literally empty, and my OSAP is late, and I don’t have anything this month, and I’m in a food bank,’” she added.
Maynard noted while there is more discussion and awareness around food insecurity on campus, it is also more prevalent than before due to higher tuition fees as a result of inflation. She added that international students, have experienced food insecurity to a larger degree.
“Being a student [now] is a very different thing than being a student 40 years ago,” she said. “What was once a rite of passage [food insecurity] is an active barrier and something that can have long-term impacts on students’ mental health and physical health as well.”
Maynard cited some of the effects from studies: lower GPA, higher likelihood of dropping courses, and health effects.
Sara Qureshi, the Carleton Food Centre program co-ordinator, said food insecurity is “definitely a stigmatized issue.”
Qureshi said that while there are students with financial instability who are more open for help, there are others who come by for snacks that have “a little bit more of a reluctance to admit they need that resource.”
While Meal Exchange works with the Carleton Food Centre on events such as the Good Food challenge and Trick-or-eat, Maynard says “there’s incredible potential at Carleton to be addressing this issue from a really systematic standpoint.”
She suggests Carleton should run a Hungry for Knowledge survey to find out how many students are experiencing food insecurity. “The first step in being able to do something about the issue is being able to put a number to it,” she said.
Qureshi said the Food Centre has talked about setting up the survey—which has been done at other schools already—but still needs to figure out how the data collection will work. She said she hopes it can be done in two to three years’ time.
Maynard has put on a voice on the issue with her study, as she says it’s important to have both quantitative and qualitative research to find solutions.
Maynard said the goal is to have data on the long-term effects on health and academics of food insecurity for students, adding that it’s currently a “gap” in literature.
She said she wants the study to elevate the voices of those who experience food insecurity and have more voices and involvement from student groups, university administration, as well as provincial and federal government in the future.
“I think it’s incredibly realistic,” she said. “Anything’s possible . . . it really depends on whether or not campuses are willing to make this a priority for their students.”
Photo by Lauren Hicks
