BACK IN college, my friends and I would joke about only affording one good meal a day.

“Good” was pretty subjective. Some days, it would mean being able to stop by KFC for dinner. Other days, we would be referring to the pre-prepared dishes at Lawson or 7-Eleven. If we were feeling particularly boujee, we’d make our way to Samgyupsalamat—at the price of not eating the entire day and budgeting our leftover allowances for the rest of the week.

It never occurred to us that there was anything wrong with these habits. For the longest time, I was convinced that starving oneself was simply the college experience. It was not until much later that I realized: Why should starving be anyone’s experience?

At large, food security is weighed on a national scale. June 2022 surveys showed that around 3.1 million Filipino households have experienced involuntary hunger. Consequently, the government continues to scramble in coming up with solutions. Their plans involve better food security coordination, local alternatives for crop imports, and collaborations with the United States (US) in building food production capacity.

To a certain extent, there have also been efforts to alleviate the issue of food insecurity within schools. The Department of Social Welfare and Development has been conducting supplementary feeding programs for day care center children, and Senator Ma. Imelda “Imee” Marcos continues to push for the redistribution of the infamous NutriBun.

However, in the discussion of achieving food security, there never seems to be any room on the table for our country’s university students.

The US Government Accountability Office has acknowledged that millions of college students across the nation have been going hungry. This lack of access to affordable and nutritious food revealed direct links to adverse effects on students’ academic performance and overall mental health, even increasing dropout rates in higher education institutions.

In trying to solve the issue, the US government has built on-campus food pantries and implemented the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food stamps for at-risk students.

Though progress in the US is slow, it is progress nonetheless—much more than what the Philippines has been doing for its own college students. Time and time again, we have neglected the fact that living expenses are essentially educational expenses. Food and housing security will always be necessary to achieving quality education.

Anyone who says otherwise reaffirms the decades-old sentiment that suffering is part and parcel of transitioning to young adulthood. It shouldn’t be.

Solving the problem ultimately begins with inclusion. Before anything, college students should be able to pull up a chair and be in the room where it happens. Candid conversations on the extent of food insecurity across different universities will aid in better visualizing how pervasive the issue is and how crucial it is to lobby for change.

Further on, the government can work on providing better support for students at risk. It might benefit them to take a page from the book of how the US has been handling this crisis: Bolster assistance programs, establish food pantries, and strive for more systemic responses.

For as long as there are college students who are getting by on one meal a day, then we can never truly say that we are addressing our nation’s food deprivation issue.

It is not a matter of putting into place a hierarchy of whose hunger should be alleviated first. It is merely way overdue for us to recognize the gravity of this problem, the urgency of which we need to act, and the importance of community. Our students deserve spaces where they can communicate the depth of this matter, as well as sustainable safety nets that will allow them to focus on their education.

Until then, it is a game that none of us will ever seem to win—unless we can level the playing field and change the rules as we go along.

Andrea Mikaela Llanes is an AB Communication alumna of Ateneo de Manila University. They currently work as a Content Writer for REX Education. For more, you can reach them at andreabllanes@gmail.com.