Green is the New Black

Executive Summary

Food insecurity is defined as the “state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable nutritious food”. Food is available but not accessible for 1 and every 3 students at Grand Valley State University and as a whole 22% of college students have low levels of food insecurity

Grades have a strong negative correlation with food insecurity. Students stay that they have a harder time focusing in class and often have to miss events because of how they feel after not eating. Although this is the main definition of food insecurity, the lack of food, we are focusing on how food with poor nutritional value affects students and their health. It is hard to get a grasp on student health because they are mainly going and do not report many health problems

Students simply cannot afford the high pricing that colleges set for healthy food. Many students eat foods high in fat, low in nutrition, but they know they should be eating healthier. Some reasons for this could be economic inability to buy healthier food, lack of knowledge in preparation, or just simply choosing to eat poorly. Food insecurity is not just the lack of food, but the lack of nutritious food, which is the focus of this project.

Conclusion

Through this project, we hope to reach the students on the Grand Valley campus. We will connect with the community by reaching out to community members and organizations to be speakers during our cooking classes. By bringing in GVSU programs like the Sustainable Agriculture Project (SAP) and Replenish, we can raise awareness, increase participation and reduce the stigma of food insecurity.

Our intended impact is to increase student proficiency in cooking and positively impact the health of the students who attend by providing easy and healthy recipes.

In order to put our plan in motion, we would talk to Campus Housing and community members who we would bring in as speakers. We would also plan out recipes that we could teach and contact resident assistants to help us teach the classes. Lastly, we would get the word out through social media and flyers around campus

Once we have established this program, we could expand it in various ways. First, we could increase the frequency of the classes per month and provide recipes that are better for different dietary needs. We could also expand by doing a potting party, where students could plant a small pot with a vegetable, so they could later eat the food that they had planted. Lastly, we could give out recipe cards and utilize social media pages to post recipes once or twice a week.