While many college students fear the dreaded Freshman 15, others are more concerned about how they are going to scrape up enough money to pay for their next meal.
A recent study by Oregon State University found that about 60 percent of college students at one Oregon university had been food insecure at some point in 2013.
Food insecurity is defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.”
Two new questions were added to the Healthy Gator survey in Spring 2013 pertaining to food insecurity, said Natalie Rella, a health promotion specialist at GatorWell.
The results of the 2013 survey showed that 22 percent of UF students skipped meals occasionally in the last year to save money.
“I think it’s a problem if any percentage of student is saying that they’re skipping meals to save money very often,” Rella said.
The results also showed that about 3 percent of students obtained emergency help from some sort of food provider like a food pantry or soup kitchen.
Although only a small percentage of students said they received emergency help, Rella still finds it scary to think a young person is going to a food pantry.
“They’ve worked hard enough to make it into UF, and now they are unable to feed themselves,“ Rella said.
One Gainesville option for students in need is Gainesville Harvest at Santa Fe College, a food pantry on SFC’s campus.
“Anybody of the Santa Fe community can come each Monday to get a bread and sweet,” said Sarah Stone, a retired professor of SFC and current volunteer at the food pantry.
However, only people with vouchers issued by a counselor or someone of authority at SFC are permitted to receive nonperishable food items from the pantry.
Janis Mena, a registered dietitian at the UF Student Health Care Center, thinks the food pantry at SFC is a great way to help students deal with food insecurity.
“Most of them are fulltime workers, fulltime parents and fulltime college students,” Mena said. “So they’ve got a lot on their plates, so to speak, and maybe not a whole lot on their plate.”
[A version of this story ran on page 3 on 1/30/2014 under the headline "Food insecurity plaguing students nationwide, locally"]
