I was pretty poor in college and the easiest thing to cut from the budget was food. If I’d budgeted $20/wk, and I could get $10 of food from a food pantry, I would have. My roommate’s mother saved us many times with the bags of groceries she brought about once a month (nice toilet paper! mac and cheese, ramen of course). Someone invited me to dinner, I went. I ate twice a week at the sorority house.
I don’t find food banks providing food to students new or surprising. Many of the churches near colleges offer free coffee and donuts on Sundays, spaghetti dinners one night a week, soup and bread near Easter, and yes, some kids are there just for the free food.
Another thing that has changed is that when I was college age, when I worked at a restaurant or even at the college food service, I got a meal. One guy in my dorm worked at a pizza place and brought home a pizza every shift (2 am pizza,yum). That isn’t the case anymore. My daughter has worked places where she got a food item for half price, so she still had to pay for.