abstract: Background In the United States (US), first-year university students typically live on campus and purchase a meal plan. In general, meal plans allow the student a set number of meals per week or semester, or unlimited meals. Understanding how students’ use their meal plan, and barriers and facilitators to meal plan use, may help decrease nutrition-related issues. Methods First-year students’ meal plan and residence information was provided by a large, public, southwestern university for the 2015-2016 academic year. A subset of students (n=619) self-reported their food security status. Logistic generalized estimating equations (GEEs) were used to determine if meal plan purchase and use were associated with food insecurity. Linear GEEs were used to examine several potential reasons for lower meal plan use. Logistic and Linear GEEs were used to determine similarities in meal plan purchase and use for a total of 599 roommate pairs (n=1186 students), and 557 floormates. Results Students did not use all of the meals available to them; 7% of students did not use their meal plan for an entire month. After controlling for socioeconomic factors, compared to students on unlimited meal plans, students on the cheapest meal plan were more likely to report food insecurity (OR=2.2, 95% CI=1.2, 4.1). In Fall, 26% of students on unlimited meal plans reported food insecurity. Students on the 180 meals/semester meal plan who used fewer meals were more likely to report food insecurity (OR=0.9, 95% CI=0.8, 1.0); after gender stratification this was only evident for males. Students’ meal plan use was lower if the student worked a job (β=-1.3, 95% CI=-2.3, -0.3) and higher when their roommate used their meal plan frequently (β=0.09, 99% CI=0.04, 0.14). Roommates on the same meal plan (OR=1.56, 99% CI=1.28, 1.89) were more likely to use their meals together. Discussion This study suggests that determining why students are not using their meal plan may be key to minimizing the prevalence of food insecurity on college campuses, and that strategic roommate assignments may result in students’ using their meal plan more frequently. Students’ meal plan information provides objective insights into students’ university transition. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Exercise and Nutritional Sciences 2019

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This thesis aims to see If an algorithm could automatically generate a meal plan that is optimized for low food waste. Design and creation is the method used and the algorithm is developed over a few iterations. The idea is that the algorithm could be used in a mobile application that allows users to search for recipes, mark the ones they like, add their own, and generate a meal plan. The resulting algorithm consists of four parts; an input stage, a stage that decides when to cook each portion, an improvement stage in which the algorithm searches for a better combination of recipes, and an output stage. An adaptation of a neighborhood search is used for the search algorithm, in addition, two heuristic evaluation functions are used to evaluate the waste and other factors of the meal plan. The test results show that the algorithm can generate meal plans with no leftover items (that last shorter than 60 days) for a lot of different test cases. More recipes produce better results up to a certain point, but not so many recipes are needed to have a chance of a successful meal plan generation. Future testing and research in this area could lead to a lot of benefits for people and the climate.