University students consume relatively more unhealthy foods than healthy foods(1,2). This is concerning as poor dietary patterns could link to poor health. In the context of this study, modifying university students’ diets could maintain or improve their health.

Since the establishment of the Eatwell Guide, its adherence rate has been low(3), and only limited research on the topic. There is a potential gap in understanding how the Eatwell Guide is viewed as a health-promoting tool. It is also worth studying if university students see this tool as helpful for healthy eating. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the university students’ perceptions regarding the role of the Eatwell Guide, with the objective of identifying the university student’s perceived barriers and facilitators to using the Eatwell Guide.

Convenience, purposive, and snowball sampling were used to recruit participants (n=12) in London. Participants were divided into two groups for semi-structured focus group interviews. One focus group consisted of public health nutrition students (n=6) and another group was students of other disciplines (n=6). Public health nutrition students were recruited as their views could be significant in the effectiveness of the Eatwell Guide implementation, given their job nature. A thematic analysis was used to generate codes and themes.

Four themes emerged from the analysis: Healthy Eating Perception, Obstacles to Using the Eatwell Guide, Enablers to Use the Eatwell Guide, and Differences Between the Two Groups. Participants’ perceptions of healthy eating were different from the Eatwell Guide. Participants identified personal (financial situation, time consideration, preferences, and nutrition conception) and environmental factors (food availability, accessibility, and marketing strategies to promote unhealthy foods) as the obstacles to using the Eatwell Guide, while improving the food environment and the feasibility of the Eatwell Guide could be the facilitators. The nutritionist group is more knowledgeable about the Eatwell Guide. However, they also face the above obstacles that the non-nutritionist group faces when practising healthy eating.

Eating practice is highly individual, which makes it a complex area to intervene. The originality of this study contributes to the limited literature on the Eatwell Guide by increasing the understanding of factors that deter or help university students from using the Eatwell Guide for healthy eating. The findings could serve as monitoring and evaluation to inform what could result in the low adherence rate to the Eatwell Guide. The findings could also inform public health policy development to create more tailored interventions and improve the food environment for university students. Future research could replicate this study to evaluate the Eatwell Guide in wider populations and explore strategies to communicate it to reach different populations. Foremost, research is needed to examine ways to make the food environment more enabling for university students to improve public health.