This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, on the condition that users give exact credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if they made any changes. Health and Inequity: A Socio-Cultural Analysis on Food and Nutrition Among Students Dr. Ziya A. Pathan  Associate Professor, Deptment of Sociology & Social Work, University of Eswatini, Southern Africa Abstract: Food is not just a biological need but it is very much social in nature. Socialization and culture has an influence on the eating habits as culture plays a significant role in our daily food choices and diet. The present study endeavors to create an awareness on the effects of unhealthy food habits which are developed by the students due to one’s culture or enforced by an organization. Undergraduate students pursuing education at University of Eswatini are considered ensuring or seeking information that will be helpful in the research. Nutritionist in the academic sphere is consulted to interpret the data looking into the health perspective and predict the threats imposed by the food culture health-wise. The study revealed that most students eat twice a day and some once which is not advisable and recommended by dietitians and nutritionists, because this can obviously lead to malnutrition and under nourishment. The developed culture of eating in the institution, happens to impose an unhealthy hazard to the health of students. One of the major challenges of students is that they are not permitted to cook for themselves in the institution (dormitory), which exposes students to junk food, hence the future health complications, like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and many other diet related illnesses or conditions. The research recommends reframing university rules on cooking, provision of meals on fixed time and nutrition based education should be provided by the institution. Keywords: health, food culture, nutrition, junk food, implications. Introduction Nutrition is an interesting subject and everyone loves food, even the thought of food brings joy to oneself. Food plays a very important role in our daily lives. Food can determine one’s mood and performance in their day to day activities; for example, a good breakfast can help individual face work challenges with positive attitude, leading to the achievement of goals. (Pathan, 2013). It can be or it is used to express affection for someone indirectly, breakfast in bed, to reinforce love relationships through dinner dates and also to show a sign of remorse in cases of disputes, dinner surprises for example. On a larger perspective, the idea of having food as a means of earning a living has also gained momentum in past few decades. Critically when we think of it, most of our activities revolves around food and nutrition even though we might not be consciously aware of that. Food is clearly important for nutrition, but it's also meaningful to humans in other ways. Anthropologist Margaret Mead famously wrote about how food is for gifting. What Mead meant by this is that food provides us with something more symbolic than simply nutrition (though that's certainly important). Food is meant to be exchanged and shared with family and Suggested Citation Pathan, Z.A. (2023). Health and Inequity: A Socio-Cultural Analysis on Food and Nutrition Among Students. European Journal of Theoretical and Applied Sciences, 1(4), 101-108. DOI: 10.59324/ejtas.2023.1(4).11