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The Michigan State University Student Food Bank is celebrating 25 years of helping to address an underappreciated impediment to academic success — food insecurity. Lack of reliable access to affordable, nutritious food is common at colleges and universities across the country, a growing problem that can undermine learning.
Founded in 1993, the MSU Student Food Bank was the first in the nation to be operated by students, for students. It serves more than 6,000 students annually, many with families, distributing more than 110,000 pounds of food.
“You can’t learn when you’re hungry,” said Dennis Martell, director of MSU’s Health Promotion Department and staff advisor to the MSU Student Food Bank. “Many people can’t believe hunger is an issue for college students because they assume if you can afford college, you can afford food, but that’s a fallacy. The general public doesn’t realize that only 35 percent of students live on campus with meal plans. It’s mostly the other 65 percent who are food insecure.”
Based on surveys of MSU students, Martell’s group this year estimated that 2,200, or 4.4 percent of the student body, experienced food insecurity that disrupted their eating patterns. Students who were food insecure also were more likely to have a lower grade point average.
“Students are faced with difficult choices every day,” Martell said. “We strongly believe that deciding between spending money on food or spending money on rent or books is not a decision MSU students should be forced to make. Though I’m proud that we’ve helped students for 25 years, my hope is that one day we can close our doors — that we find a way to eliminate students’ food insecurity.”
Gifts to the MSU Student Food Bank can be made online.
The Health Promotion Department is part of Student Health and Wellness, a division of the Office of Health Affairs. The office was created to increase safety and quality practices across all of MSU’s health care services, including student health and wellness, athletic medicine, MSU Health Care and other clinical activities for the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing and Osteopathic Medicine.
Sidebar: Stereotype versus reality
The College and University Food Bank Alliance, of which MSU is a founding member, in 2016 conducted a national study on food insecurity on college campuses. The report, Hunger on Campus, revealed findings that were startling and many that are contrary to the popular stereotype of food insecure students: