Food accessibility: A lived experience perspective of college students living away from parents’ home

Abstract

This article aims to examine food accessibility for college students who moved away from their parents’ home, focusing on both objective and perceived perspectives. It considers all the food options surrounding them in the city where they lived for their studies. Using a qualitative methodology based on interviews with 24 students living away from their parents’ home, local stakeholders, heads of university organizations, and field observations, this research shows a gap between objective accessibility (OA) and perceived accessibility (PA) of the supply of food shops, whereas a greater convergence is observed for offers of meals taken away from home. The results show that food options that are available close to where college students live (study, home, commute) are not often included in their set of consideration. Furthermore, they experience conflicts between the three dimensions of PA (price, distance, and cognitive). College students react to these conflicts with different coping strategies depending on their level of food and urban literacy. To improve food accessibility, it is necessary to adopt an integrated approach according to the types of literacy.