Episode 113: Food Insecurity on College Campuses
About the Podcast
This Food Dignity Podcast conversation is with Matthew Landry, a nutrition and health promotion postdoctoral fellow and registered dietitian at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Clancy and Matt dig into the need to normalize the provision of basic needs for students and how that can help with their mental health, wellness, and future performance in school and the workforce.
About Matthew Landry
Matthew Landry is a nutrition and health promotion postdoctoral fellow and registered dietitian at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. His current research focuses on identifying the optimal diet (or diets) for chronic disease prevention and addressing the challenges of designing, implementing, and reporting clinical trials that test dietary patterns. He’s particularly interested in behavioral interventions that promote plant-forward and plant-based diets. He’s a passionate advocate for policies that address nutrition-related health inequalities particularly in low resource settings and/or with communities experiencing health inequalities related to food insecurity and structural disparities.
Discussion Takeaways
- Matt focuses his research on how food insecurity is related to health-related inequalities. However, collegiate food insecurity became a passion project for him as he observed that his peers in graduate school and now his students, as a Stanford professor, are suffering from limited food security. It’s impacting their health, wellbeing and academic performance. He now wants to know what causes collegiate nutritional insecurity to exist, persist, and how can we resolve it.
- When preparing for one of his classes on collegiate food insecurity, he noticed that there was a lot of information on prevalence but not on solutions for this issue.
- 1 in 3 college students could potentially be food insecure.
- He wrote a piece on collegiate food insecurity for the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. He wanted to bring this arena to the attention of dietitians and discuss what we’re doing about it and what we can do better.
- Demographics of the collegiate student are changing. A lot of them come from marginalized backgrounds and with less financial means than students in the past. We need to be able to account for that.
- Students don’t like asking for assistance or help because of the shame, stigma, and the pride of wanting to do it on their own for the first time.
- So what can we do to resolve college hunger?
- Allow students to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits without over complicating the process to apply.
- Reduce college tuition or provide loan forgiveness.
- Leaders on college campuses need to know about this problem and what resources are available for the students who need them.
- Forward-thinking colleges have created centers for basic needs that are available for all students. These places take care of everything from housing, food, to child care. These offices should have the same funding and staffing as a college career center has available.
- Change the name of a food pantry to something more inviting. Consider when it is open and if the location is convenient for students. Offer a variety of foods that nourish the recipients.
- Right now, there are a lot of student-led initiatives that help feed and support their peers in need. These initiatives need to become stronger and support from the school administration.
- Food Dignity is the ability to gain appropriate, nutritious food for all so that we can appreciate food for what it provides and how it helps us maximize our potential.
#1 tip to improve access to healthy food
- Just because a college student is on a budget doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve a healthful, nutritious meal.
Each week on the Food Dignity® Podcast, the Food Dignity® Movement's Clancy Harrison hosts a wide variety of hunger experts and other people making changes on the frontlines. Join us as we dive deep into conversations that will change the way you think about food insecurity.
Listen to our trailer!
Want to learn more about how we might work together?
Fight hidden hunger by becoming a
Food Dignity® Champion and take the HIDDEN HUNGER PLEDGE >
