Food Consumption

1. How many meals do persons at The UWI-STA have on campus?

The majority of respondents (68.5%) eat one or two meals on campus (Fig 1). A minority (15%) have three meals on campus, while 16.4% indicate that they snack throughout the day. This finding is particularly important given that the majority of respondents were students. It therefore points to two important questions – what are the meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) that students are having on campus? And, what constitutes these meals? With increasing enrollment in the Evening University, which for 2013/2014 stood at 1,539 students – the eating behavior of different segments of the student and staff populations requires attention. Classes in the Evening University run from 5:00pm to 10:00pm; and the fact that fast food outlets selling fried foods and sandwiches are the only food locations open during those hours points to the health implications of on campus food consumption.

2. How often do members of the Campus community buy food on campus?

Nearly 40% of respondents purchase food “a few times per week” on the campus, while 16.3% indicated that they purchase food on campus “a few times a day.” 17.2% of persons purchase food “once a day” while only 2.8% do not purchase food from campus. It appears that a large proportion of the respondents however, still leave campus to purchase food. When asked if they ever go off campus to purchase food or beverages, 65.7% of the respondents indicated “yes”, as opposed to 34.3% who stated “no.”

3. How much do persons at the UWI-STA spend to purchase food on campus?

When asked to indicate the average amount of money they spend to purchase food on campus on a weekly basis:

•the majority (53%) stated that they spend between $20.00 and $100.00 per week

•27.4% spend between $100.00 and $200.00 on a weekly basis

•the minority (2.8%) spend $400.00 or more to purchase food on campus. Based on these figures, it can be projected that on average a student may spend $2,600.00 over the 13 week semester on the purchase of on-campus food. This becomes more important when the income level of these persons is taken into consideration. The majority of respondents (64.2%) indicated that they do not have an income, while 14.8% stated that their income was less than $3,000.00 per month. Similarly, the majority of respondents (24.6%) indicated that they have “no monthly allowance,” followed by 21.6% who stated that their allowance was between $300.00 and $500.00. A minority (10.5%) indicated that their allowance was “less than $300.00”. Therefore, the financial cost of purchasing food on campus may be an area of concern for students, particularly as the macro forces of inflation and food import dependence result in gradually higher food prices.

4. Are place-of-residence and food consumption associated?

Based on Table 1, it can be seen that those who live off campus are more likely to purchase food on campus compared with other residential groups. By contrast, homemade food was consumed on campus by approximately 1/3 of all residential groups.

5. What are the obstacles to healthy eating at the UWI St. Augustine Campus ?

Food which is consumed on campus can come from several sources: on campus food outlets and vending machines, off campus food stalls/restaurants or homemade food, which is brought to the campus. With regards to the latter, the following was found:

•33.6% of the respondents indicated that they bring homemade food to campus “a few times a week”

•15.4% stated that they bring food “daily”

•13.1% bring food once a week

•16.4% bring food either once or a few times a month

• 21.6% of the respondents do not bring home from home

Based on Table 3, it can be seen that most persons who do not bring homemade food consume one meal on campus. Those who bring food frequently, such as a few times a week, also consume one to three meals on campus.

6. Local or foreign – What are the Campus community’s food preferences?

The UWI has grown in physical space and human resources since its days as the ICTA. At the UWI-STA, gradual steps are being taken to expand infrastructural capacity to accommodate the growth in the student population, and the provision of a wide variety of food outlets for students and staff is a necessary part of this process.

There is at present one ‘food court’ located at the Southern end of the campus, which has three fast food outlets and a fruit stall that sells fruits such as bananas, pears, apples and plum as well as ice-cream and pies.

In addition, franchises and privately-owned outlets provide members of the campus community with meals ranging from Creole dishes, vegetarian meals, Arabian food items, Japanese food, ‘Indian’ food, and doubles; the most popular of these options are foreign fast food outlets (Table 4).

7. What are the reasons for our Campus Community’s consumption patterns?

Food is not simply about what a people choose to consume and not consume, but is a reflection of a society’s underlying values about “class, sex/gender, race, religion, and even nationality and humanity” (Bonnekessen 2010). To understand what people eat and their preferences, a look at the reasons for their eating is useful (Fig 5.08). The leading reason among respondents were as follows:

•Taste (41.2%)

•Cost (20.6%)

•Health (11.5% ) The least popular reasons for food choice were:

•Friends/ peer pressure (0.3%)

•Business hours, of the food outlets (0.3%)