Barriers and enablers to achievement of food security and high-quality diets for tertiary education students in Australia

Abstract

The nutritional health of tertiary education students requires more attention from the institutions and government. International students who relocate from their home country to live and study in a different cultural and social food environment may experience additional challenges in food and nutrition security compared with their domestic peers. The ultimate aim of this research is to provide evidence-based recommendations to assist universities and the government to enable domestic and international students to be more food secure and achieve better diet quality. The mixed methods design was employed in this thesis. The introduction of the thesis is included in Chapter One and methods in Chapter Two. Two literature reviews, a scoping review on dietary acculturation of international students (Chapter Three) and a systematic review on food insecurity and dietary outcomes of university students (Chapter Four), were conducted to inform the design of the following qualitative and quantitative studies. Changes in eating habits experienced by international students in Australia were explored through semi-structured interviews (Chapter Five). The food security status of domestic and international students was investigated and compared via a cross-sectional online survey (Chapter Six). To assess the diet quality of domestic and international students, the Healthy Eating Index for Australian Adults (HEIFA-2013) was calculated after their completion of 24-hour dietary recalls (Chapter Seven). The findings are integrated to tailor the recommendations for domestic and international tertiary education students to improve their food security status and diet quality (Chapter Eight).