Her freshman year, Marisa Faibish tried to live off microwavable Easy Mac. Now as the student director for campus recreation and wellness program at Florida State University (FSU), she realized students could not live off just macaroni and cheese. Faibish thinks it’s a great idea for students, especially freshman, to have an opportunity to learn how to shop for healthy foods on a college budget.
Starting last spring semester, FSU began offering free grocery store tours to the Publix two miles from campus, to students as a collaborative effort between Campus Recreation and Health Promotion.
“We started healthy cooking classes that were free to our students a couple of years ago,” said Lauren Ormsbee, campus recreation coordinator. “We found that in those classes, when we were going through the presentations or even after the classes, students would come up and say, ‘I don’t really know what I’m doing when I go to the grocery store. I don’t know what to choose because I’m on a college budget, so I don’t know how to stay healthy and stay within that.’ We started brainstorming with our Health Promotion Department and then just decided to give it a go and see if students actually signed up.”
FSU offered three tours last semester and each tour was filled. Students simply had to sign up for the class online, then the day before their tour, they would be sent a reminder email and a power point, made by Faibish, going over basic details of the grocery store, coupon guides and questions students can ask. Campus recreation student directors and nutrition educators give the tours with a checklist of discussion points and a flowchart of the grocery store, so each tour offers exactly the same experience to students.
“Nutrition educators take some time to go through a food label, what to look for, what certain things mean, what stands out,” explained Ormsbee. “Serving size is huge, because most people don’t just eat the serving size of whatever it is they’re eating or drinking. They make sure to touch on that and be aware of that kind of thing. But not focusing on calorie counting by any means, just what to be aware of for food labels.”
Ormsbee and Faibish hope to continue the tours for the next couple of years, with the goal of providing virtual tours for students who are unable to make on the 11 a.m. tours.
“We’ve had good feedback from it, especially with having people request it. The students’ voice is heard most on this campus, so as long as students still want it and it’s in demand, it will continue,” added Ormsbee.
Several other universities also offer grocery store tours to their students. Ormsbee says if schools have the means and the support to offer tours, she would definitely recommend they try it out.
“If it doesn’t work, maybe you change it or move on in a different way,” she said. “But it’s just such a key piece not just for college students, but there’s tons of adults of every age that are terrible shoppers and buy very unhealthy foods and spend more money than they necessarily needed to if they knew there were coupons. So I think it’s important for anybody.”
