Why Do College Students Waste So Much Food?

Approximately 19.7 million students in the U.S. are enrolled in colleges or universities, of which about 16.7 million are undergraduates. Many of these students attend in-person classes, so on-campus dining facilities are a central and primary source of both food and food waste for thousands of college students, particularly those who reside on-campus. 

 

During my first two years at UC Santa Barbara, I lived on-campus and relied on a meal plan, so I ate from the dining halls 99% of the time and occasionally went out to eat with friends in IV around once or twice a month. The dining halls provide a wide range of options to choose from.  They offer various foods that include comfort food, pizza, pasta, stir-fries, salad, a deli station, drinks, and dessert. The menu changes each day for every meal, which makes eating at the dining halls more interesting. When students enter a dining hall, they give their Student ID to the person near the entrance to swipe before proceeding forward to get the food they want. 

 

Because the dining halls at UCSB are all-you-can-eat buffet style, I found that students often took way more food than they could finish, which resulted in a lot of unnecessary food waste that could easily have been avoided if everyone only took what they could finish. Obviously, food that has been partially eaten by someone can’t be donated to a local food pantry due to health and safety regulations, but sometimes I would see completely untouched food going to waste simply because the student took too much food, which is just tragic. 

 

Most students are aware of their eating habits. Some of the college students from UCSB that I spoke to believe that they deserve to eat as much food as they want because of how much they pay. Many of these students take a lot of food, but end up eating only a portion of what they took. Others take small amounts to sample different foods to see what they like and don’t like before getting more. However, the general consensus among the students I spoke to was was that all college students are guilty of wasting food, regardless of their intentions.  

 

A recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences examined why 18-24 year-old college students have a higher tendency to waste food than most people and how their residence type (on or off-campus) plays a role in the amount of food they waste. The researchers found that college students have a higher tendency to waste food than people of other age/social groups because during this transitory time of young adulthood, many of the food management behaviors that might reduce their food waste haven’t been learned yet or deemed necessary. 

 

Part of that learning during this critical period often occurs when young adults start managing their own finances. For instance, I noticed that I was much more conscious of my food waste when I started buying my own groceries in my third year since I no longer had a meal plan and was living in an off-campus apartment that provided a kitchen. I think that the transition from relying on eating food made by others in dining halls where food just seems to appear and disappear to living more independently was a huge awakening for me that I really needed. Those provisioning, management, and finance behavioral practices are primarily taken care of by others when you eat at a dining hall on campus, but as soon as you no longer have a meal plan and need to fend for yourself, suddenly all that responsibility falls on your shoulders. Being independent means you have to think about the cost of groceries, the time it takes to make various dishes, how long different things will last, and of course, how much food waste you create because everything comes at a cost.