From Plate To Body: How Students Consume Food And Physical Activity For Health

Universities are critical settings in which students develop everyday practices related to food consumption and physical activity that shape long-term health and well-being. This qualitative study examines how students in Philippine state colleges consume food and physical activity as interconnected practices through which health is constructed, experienced, and negotiated within public higher education. Guided by Consumer Culture Theory, embodiment theory, and a lifestyle consumption perspective, the study employed an interpretive qualitative design using in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 15 undergraduate students from selected state colleges. Data were analyzed through thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase approach. Findings reveal that students experience food and physical activity not as separate health behaviors but as relational and mutually reinforcing practices embedded in daily routines. Food was interpreted as both fuel and reward for movement, while physical activity functioned as compensation and moral balance for food consumption. Students attached strong emotional and moral meanings to these practices, linking health to responsibility, discipline, emotional balance, and self-worth. Institutional contexts, including academic schedules, campus food environments, financial constraints, and curricular physical education requirements, significantly shaped how students ate and moved. Faced with these constraints, students actively negotiated health ideals by redefining healthy living as effort, balance, and sustainability rather than perfection. The study contributes to consumer and health research by conceptualizing student health as an embodied, culturally situated consumption process shaped by institutional structures, offering insights for health promotion and policy development within Philippine public higher education.