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What’s really on students’ plates?

13 October 2025 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Anja Aucamp

Students at the UFS are making daily food choices under tight budgets. The 2025 Food Environment Survey by the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics sheds light on these challenges.

What’s for dinner? For most students, that question is about more than taste. It’s about budgets, storage space, time, and whether the food will even last until tomorrow. At the University of the Free State (UFS), researchers have been listening closely to students’ experiences, and the results tell a powerful story.

Earlier surveys in 2020 and 2022 showed that many UFS students struggle with food insecurity and that hunger is linked to academic performance. Now, the new 2025 UFS Food Environment Survey digs deeper, providing fresh data on how students plan, shop, store and stretch their food.

The release comes at the perfect moment: the world is about to mark World Food Day on 16 October 2025 under the theme, Hand in Hand for Better Foods and a Better Future. At the UFS, that spirit of “hand in hand” is already at work through the Eat & Succeed programme and the efforts of the Food Environment Task Committee (FETC), the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, the Food Environment Office, the Department of Sustainable Food Systems and Development, and the Division of Student Affairs’ vegetable tunnels where academic and support staff are working together to build a healthier, more supportive food environment.

Navigating food choices on a tight budget

Led by Prof Louise van den Berg, Associate Professor from the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, the 2025 survey received replies from 1 586 undergraduates, a group that reflects the student body. The findings confirm what many already know: students are resourceful, but they’re also facing real challenges.

On average, students eat from three food groups a day, instead of the recommended five. Many skip on protective foods like fruit, vegetables and dairy; not because they don’t want them, but because they’re harder to afford or to keep fresh. Almost a third of students don’t have a fridge, and those who do often share small spaces. That means foods like milk, cheese, yoghurt, fruit and vegetables can go off in just a day or two. For students living on tight NSFAS budgets, buying fresh food often feels like a gamble. She says the risk of food spoiling often outweighs the benefit of buying it at all.

Shopping habits reflect these pressures too. Many students shop only once or twice a month, favouring shelf-stable foods like maize meal, noodles, and canned goods. “While such foods can fill stomachs and stretch budgets, they do not provide the same balance of nutrients as diets that regularly include fresh produce, lean proteins, and dairy,” comments Prof Van Den Berg.

She continues, pointing out another finding: when buying food on campus, students place price and convenience above everything else. “This highlights not a lack of interest in eating healthily, but rather the practical decisions students must make every day with limited money, limited time, and limited storage.”

Still, it’s not all bad news. The survey shows that most students are already making smart choices by limiting sugary drinks and salty snacks. The main gap is simply access to affordable, perishable foods that boost health and concentration.

That’s where the UFS initiatives come in. The Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, the FETC, and the Food Environment Office are working to raise awareness through programmes such as Eat & Succeed by sharing practical shopping tips, affordable healthy options, and exploring ways to improve access to safe food storage on campus. Prof Van Den Berg also believes that small, practical changes, such as making fruit and vegetables more available at fair prices, or helping students to learn how to stretch groceries further, can have a big impact on student wellbeing.

Supporting students to eat well and succeed

The results of the latest survey show that our students aren’t careless with their diets. They’re doing the best they can with what they have. “Our job is to make it easier for them to ensure that they can purchase affordable, portion-sized fruit, vegetables and dairy products without worrying about storage or spoilage. Such initiatives would help bridge the gap between financial constraints and the need for protective foods in students’ diets,” says Prof Van den Berg.

At the end of the day, the 2025 Food Environment Survey is about more than statistics only. It’s about listening to students, understanding their daily struggles, and finding real solutions, because when students have the right fuel, they have a much better chance of succeeding; both in the classroom and in life.

News Archive

Multi-disciplinary research approach at UFS

2005-10-25

UFS follows multi-disciplinary research approach with opening of new centre

“A new way of doing business in necessary in the research and teaching of agriculture and natural sciences in South Africa. We must move away from departmentalised research infrastructures and a multi-disciplinary approach to research involving several disciplines must be adapted,” said Prof Herman van Schalkwyk, Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Prof van Schalkwyk delivered the keynote address during the launch of the Centre for Plant Health Management (CePHMa) at the Main Campus in Bloemfontein today (21 October 2005). CePHMa is an initiative of the UFS Department of Plant Sciences.

According to Prof van Schalkwyk a tertiary institution must practice multi-disciplinary research to be a world-class research institution. “It is difficult for researchers to admit that they do not know a lot about each other’s area of speciality. It is therefore necessary for researchers to make a paradigm shift and to focus on inter-disciplinary co-operation. To do this, we must encourage them to work together and to find a common language to communicate ideas en establish symbiotic relationships,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.

“We tend to think that research is better and faster if it is specialised. This is not true. The new generation of scientists are young and they are trained to form a concept of the total system and not to focus on a specific area of speciality. At the UFS we encourage this approach to research. This was one of the main reasons for the establishment of CePHMa,” said Prof Van Schalkwyk.
CePHMa is the only centre of its kind in Africa and is established to extend the expertise in plant health management in South Africa and in Africa, to train experts in plant health and to conduct multi-disciplinary research about the health of agricultural crops.

“CePHMa is a virtual centre comprising of ten disciplines applicable to crop production and crop protection,” said Prof Wijnand Swart, Chairperson of CePHMa during the opening ceremony.

“The UFS is the leading institution in Africa in terms of news crop development and manages three research programmes that concentrate on new crops, i.e. the New Crop Pathology Programme, the New Crop Development Programme and the Insects on New Crops Programme. Other applied research programmes that are unique to the UFS are genetic resistance to rust diseases of small grain crops and sustainable integrated disease management of field crops,” said Prof Swart.

“Because the expected growth in population will be 80% in 2020 in sub-Saharan Africa, the future demands of food produce in Africa will be influenced. Therefore research will in future be focused on ways to improve food security by employing agricultural systems that are economically viable and environmentally sound,” said Prof Swart.

“Thorough knowledge of the concept of holistic plant health management is crucial to meet the challenge and it is therefore imperative that innovative crop protection and crop production strategies, with particular emphasis on plant health, be adopted. This is why the Department of Plant Sciences initiated the establishment of CePHMA,” he said.

According to Prof Swart there is a shortage of expertise in plant health management. “The UFS has shown the potential to address the demand of the sub-continent of Africa regarding expertise training and CePHMa is the leader in southern Africa to provide in this need,” he said.

The appropriateness and quality of training in plant health management is reflected in the fact that students from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania, Cameroon, Angola, Mozambique and Lesotho have already been trained or are in the process of being trained in at the UFS.

Scientists from CePHMa have forged partnerships with numerous national and international institutions including the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), various community trusts, seed, pesticide and agricultural chemical companies, in addition to overseas universities.

Media release
Issued by: Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel: (051) 401-2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
21 October 2005

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