The food insecurity and the young generations’ perception: a systematic review

Food insecurity is a global problem mainly generated by financial issues, critical geopolitical situations and constantly changing weather conditions that have direct effects on availability and prices of food products. These issues reduce capacity to manage the available resources with the consequence of obtaining an approximate distribution of food all over the world. Food insecurity involves multiple population groups and different generations, including University students. In order to evaluate the relationship between food insecurity and University students investigated from different points of view, this article provides a systematic literature review dedicated to this topic with the aim of identifying any research gaps. For this purpose, a selection of 29 articles was created and the subsequent analysis highlighted the main objectives dedicated to this topic i.e. “Food safety, nutrition and health”, “Food safety and determinants”, “Food security linked to financial issues”, “Food security linked to school performance” and “Food security and socio-demographic variables”. In particular, food insecurity exists in campuses mainly due to living costs, income and budget, dietary priority; it affects physical health, mental health and ultimately impacts on students’ academic performance. All surveys mainly concern individual University campuses in countries developed or in development and therefore a lack of studies dedicated to the comparison of campuses belonging to countries with different socio-economic conditions is highlighted. In light of the results obtained, the authors propose further comparative studies on the perception of food insecurity among University campuses in different geographical areas in order to provide new knowledge on the subject.