Abstract
Food insecurity is a substantial problem in Canadian university students. Multiple cross-sectional studies suggest that nearly a third of university students across Canada report food insecurity. Yet, little is understood about the experiences of food-insecure students and the impact of their experiences on their mental health. To address this, a multi-method study was conducted using quantitative and qualitative approaches to describe the prevalence, association and experience of food insecurity and mental health in undergraduate students. The current paper reports on the qualitative component, which described the lived experiences of food-insecure students, captured through face-to-face focus group interviews with participants (n = 6). The themes included (1) contributing factors to food insecurity; (2) consequences of food insecurity; and (3) students’ responses/attempts to cope with food insecurity. The findings illuminated student voices, added depth to quantitative results, and made the experience of food insecurity more visible at the undergraduate level. Additional research is needed to understand students’ diverse experiences across the university community and to inform programs to support students.
Highlights
Food insecurity—the inability to acquire or consume an adequate quality of diet or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways, or the uncertainty that one will be able to do so [1]—is a substantial public health problem in university students [2]
[14,15]. that and eighty-two undergraduate students in faculties of Health Sciences (FHS) and food insecurity and the (FEd) were recruited and the results revealed method was proposed to facilitate deeper understanding and mental health foodThis insecurity was pervasive and a positively associatedof food withinsecurity moderate–extremely severe in this population
Eight hundred and phenomenology-informed study was to gain critical insights into the lived experiences of eighty-two undergraduate students in FHS and FEd were recruited and the results revealed that food undergraduate students at University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT)
Summary
Food insecurity—the inability to acquire or consume an adequate quality of diet or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways, or the uncertainty that one will be able to do so [1]—is a substantial public health problem in university students [2]. The majority of studies have examined food insecurity in university students using a quantitative approach [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. These findings have contributed to the growing body of knowledge describing the burden of the problem in this population, they have not captured the depth of the students’ lived experiences with food insecurity
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