Group #1: Choose your food wisely or it will become pricey
Motivation: Current inflation raises prices causing students to eat less and buy less food on campus
Methods: Observations in the cafeteria + student interviews
Recommendations:
- Change product range at the VU to include healthier options and observe how that influences food choices
- Provide recommendations to VU dining services on how to provide more healthy food options
Group #2: Changing Food Choices
Motivation: To figure out what the most important drivers behind food choices are and what the thought process is behind the choices of VU students
Methods: mixed methods: Focus group (n=7), and questionnaire: Likert scale (n= 170) respondents (n= 45 not useful)
Recommendations:
- Encourage healthy choices among students
- Offer more healthy options in the vending machines on campus
- Implement a points system: if you purchase a certain number of healthy food items you receive a free healthy meal
- Group interaction (in a focus group for example) makes for more robust results since the group participants guide themselves
Group #3: Facilitators and barriers to food consumption
Motivation: Students on a budget cannot follow a healthy diet --> Goal: Does this perception hold up?
Methods: mixed methods: Interviews and questionnaire (combined with group #2)
Recommendations:
- Education on healthy food options
- Having a nutritionist present in the cafeteria
- Vegan days
- Discounts and free samples on/of healthy foods and a points system like the 2nd group mentioned
- Give students a platform to talk about their food choices more since there seems to be a lot of interest
- One surprising response to their questionnaire: the VU should not use fat-phobic language (something they had not already observed themselves).