Trash Pandas short — Daniel Santos Design

Hunger
Strike
Project Overview: We explore the complex systems behind food — how it’s grown, processed, distributed, and accessed. We look at how something as basic and essential as eating has become deeply connected to issues of affordability, inequality, and sustainability.

Research Question: How do the accessibility and affordability of healthy food options in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) influence post-secondary students’ physical health, mental wellbeing, and academic outcomes?

Project According to the FAO, food insecurity means lacking access to enough safe, nutritious food to maintain an active and healthy life.

Role
System Mapping , Data Visulization and
Research Design
DeliverableCase Study and Interactive Map
TeamDaniel Santos, Michael O’Regan, Sydney Yeom, Maria Lucia Benavides

Research

Prototype

Executive summary

The Problem Campus "Food Swamps"

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines food insecurity as a lack of regular access to enough safe and nutritious food. Rather than operating in a simple "food desert," students at institutions like York University reside within a "Food Swamp"—an environment dominated by an over-saturation of cheap, profit-driven fast food options (60.7% of the food layout) where healthy meals are deliberately marginalized, less accessible, and far more expensive.

Who we Studied

The Commuter Majority (90%): Off-campus students navigating rigid travel schedules and limited on-site dining options daily.

Racialized Minorities (70%): A diverse student base disproportionately affected by systemic economic and structural food inequities

On-Campus Residents (9.5%): A small minority demographic entirely reliant on institutional dining halls and corporate fast-food leases.

Key Insights

The "Food Swamp" Monopoly: Campus food spaces are heavily dominated by corporate fast-food leases, forcing vulnerable student populations to trade metabolic health for affordability.

The GPA and Graduation Penalty: Food insecurity acts as an academic barrier rather than a dietary choice—consistently driving down student energy, elevating depression risks by 1.67x, and lowering average GPAs from 3.24 to 2.97.

The Time-Labor Deficit: High academic workloads subtract directly from a student’s cooking and resting budgets, triggering a vicious feedback loop of physical exhaustion and severe cognitive strain.

System Mapping:

This project uses systems modeling and secondary research to explore how students’ food environments, closely linked to food security, shape academic performance. The system map below visualizes the key elements, relationships, and feedback loops within this environment, shown through both an early draft and a refined final version.

Final System Mapping:

We organized our initial draft and synthesized its elements into a traditional Meadows-style stock-and-flow diagram, a systems modelling approach used to represent stocks, flows, and feedback loops (Meadows, 2008).

Stocks:

We came up with three different types of stocks:
Inputs, Internals, Outputs

Inputs

INTERNALS

Outputs

Flows

Feedback Loops

Reinforcing Loops

Balancing loops

Purpose:

Effectively process nutritional intake, available time, and academic workload into academic performance and employability.

Evidence

Food Security & Accessibility

Key Takeaway: Access shapes diet quality

Increased access to nutritious food is strongly associated with higher-quality diets, particularly greater consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Public health research suggests that food environments with more healthy options support better dietary outcomes, reinforcing the importance of availability over simple choice.

Food Security & Accessibility

Key Takeaway: Adequate nutrition supports metabolic stability and restorative sleep.

Access to nutrition plays a critical role in physical health through its effects on metabolism, energy regulation, and sleep quality. Research shows that both nutrient deficiencies and excesses can disrupt metabolic balance, while poor nutrition is also linked to inflammation and sleep disturbances.

Food Security & Mental Health

Key Takeaway: Poor nutrition exacerbates stress, fatigue, and cognitive strain.

Financial and time pressures often push students toward nutritionally poor or repetitive food choices, increasing stress and disrupting sleep and energy levels. These patterns negatively affect emotional resilience and cognitive functioning, particularly for students already experiencing structural disadvantage.

Food Security & Academic Outcome

Key Takeaway: Food insecurity directly undermines academic success.

Food insecurity is consistently linked to lower academic performance through fatigue, impaired concentration, and increased stress, anxiety, and depression. Food-insecure students also expend significant time and energy securing meals, which can reduce course loads, increase dropout risk, and lower overall GPA.

Broader Implications

Key Takeaway: Campus food environments reflect and amplify structural inequality.

Rising living costs and stagnant wages are key drivers of food insecurity among students, particularly in the GTA. Profit-driven campus food systems often limit access to affordable, nutritious options, disproportionately affecting students from marginalized backgrounds and reinforcing broader socioeconomic inequities.

Research

Link to Prototype