As an undergraduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Surely Wallace said she’d often go hungry while balancing the responsibilities of work, being a full-time student and a caregiver for a family member.
“I had a lot of challenges to deal with,” said Wallace, who is now a graduate student studying for her master’s in nutritional science at Manoa. “It was me being a caregiver, and working, and being a student, and all the expenses — it was just a difficult time.”
While it’s a popular stereotype that struggling college students survive on a diet of cheap instant ramen, university officials recognize that “food insecurity” is a serious problem for some students. The term refers to a lack of adequate nutritious food to function as a productive member of society, according to Joannie Dobbs, an assistant specialist in UH-Manoa’s Department of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Sciences.
An online student survey — dubbed the #FeedTheDegree study — is underway to update a UH study that’s more than a decade old. That 2006 report found 21 percent of students were “food insecure” at the time.
Dobbs, who is also the nutritionist at the health center on campus, said she’s been handing out extra food to hungry students for the past 10 years.
“I hear it frequently in my patients, so I know that they exist,” she said of students who are missing meals. “Part of the problem is that we don’t have a lot of options on campus, and if someone isn’t going into food places because they don’t have money, they’re invisible to a lot of people.”
Wallace and fellow students in a graduate-level course on food systems that Dobbs teaches wanted to know how widespread the problem of food insecurity is among the university’s nearly 19,000 students so that they could propose solutions. They came up with the idea for the survey.
Danita Dahl, a graduate student in Dobbs’ class who is studying animal sciences, said the students hope to use the survey data to propose solutions that may include food pantries, community gardens or cooking classes. The information could also be used to apply for grants.
Wallace said students may miss meals or go hungry for a variety of reasons, from financial to cultural. She added that some students may be meeting daily calorie needs, but not hitting nutritional targets for protein, fruits and vegetables.
“If someone doesn’t have enough to buy the types of foods that they need, they might be, for example, buying a lot of rice and maybe just having rice and oil or rice and ketchup,” she said. “It’s enough to fill their stomach, but if you can’t afford all the sources of foods that have the nutrition your body needs, you could still be food insecure even though you’re eating enough calories, because the quality of nutrition is not there to function and be healthy and active.”
Dahl said students shouldn’t have to choose between paying for schooling and paying for nutritious meals.
“When you look at how much tuition has risen versus how much people are making, I don’t think anybody should have to choose between quality of life and education,” she said.
Dobbs’ students produced a two-minute video highlighting the impact food insecurity has on college students, including the negative effect being hungry has on critical thinking skills, concentration and memory. The students coupled the video with a petition with more than 800 student signatures calling for a new study on food insecurity, and sent it off to UH President David Lassner.
Lassner was quick to endorse the idea. The students designed the survey, which was sent to all registered UH-Manoa students on May 1.
“It is our intention to use the information gathered through this study to develop a plan to decrease food insecurity at Manoa, beginning with the identification and prioritization of solutions that help our students,” Lassner said in a statement.
Students are encouraged to check their school email and complete the survey before the end of summer.
“We’ve got a complicated problem because we’ve got multiple types of people with multiple reasons that they’re food insecure. Where do we start?” Dobbs said. “That’s part of the survey: We need a way to prioritize and create a good plan.”
