A BUSINESS IN Cork is aiming to improve students’ diets by giving them their week’s dinners every Monday – and charging just €10.

College Dinners, run by local man David O’Leary, will offer students at University College Cork a selection of fresh ingredients each week. After registering with the scheme, they can pick up their food package at one of eight locations around UCC, then follow recipes on the College Dinners website. Each package will contain enough food for four meals, as many students go home on Friday evening.

Mr O’Leary told TheJournal.ie a typical package will contain “four pieces of meat, four or five potatoes, two onions and two carrots, and maybe half a bulb of garlic”. The website will then display recipes tailored to the ingredients given out that week.

He said he hopes the scheme will help push students towards healthier eating. “Watching the rubbish the students were eating, and seeing the shops around UCC – you have no problem picking up rashers, or frozen pizzas, but it’s difficult to get fresh vegetables or fresh meat,” Mr O’Leary said.

Students can be very easygoing – or lazy might be a harsh way of looking at it. And it’s about making it easier for them and guiding them with simple recipes. So they don’t have to eat noodles for four years.

The scheme, which has been set up with support from the UCC student union, will begin signing students up when they arrive for registration. Mr O’Leary said there had been “a huge amount of interest” from parents.