This year's intake of students are starting to turn up at universities around the country and judging by the events being organised by the freshers reception committees - seven-stop bar crawls, 'freshers' piss-ups', £1 drinks - cooking is about the last thing on anyone's mind.

For foreign students, this booze-fuelled initiation - which reinforces every stereotype they must have about British youth culture - must be mystifying. Despite a range of moves from government recently to interest younger students in food, it's still the case that for many homegrown students, it's simply uncool to show an interest in food.

It's hard eating healthily at uni. Most halls have limited cooking facilities, campus-based restaurants and supermarkets can be pricey and accommodation may be miles from cheaper shops. The temptation to live off Pot Noodles and other cheap convenience foods is high - maybe it's students who are accounting for the recent 12% rise in sales of baked beans.

But it is worth acquiring some cooking skills, and here's why:

• You'll probably feel homesick. Even if you've been gagging to get away from home, it has its virtues when it comes to providing at least one free meal a day.

• If you live off junk food, you'll gain weight. American colleges have a term for it: Freshman 15, for the 15 pounds that new students reputedly put on in their first year.

• There are other downsides to eating badly: spots, greasy hair, lack of energy, mood swings, inability to concentrate, greater susceptibility to colds, flu and any other bug that's going around. You may not notice these in the first few weeks, but they take their toll.

• Cooking/preparing your own food is cheaper (food prices have gone up 10% in the past year, if you hadn't noticed...).

• It's the quickest way to make friends and - let's not be equivocal about it - pull, as Masterchef James Nathan recently pointed out on this site.

The first thing to do is try to find two or three like-minded friends who will share the cost of buying food and take turns making meals. The £21.48 that the NatWest Student Living Index estimates to be the average student spend in the supermarket each week doesn't go far. But £80 goes a long way to feed four. If you have a car, you can drive to discounters like Lidl and Aldi, whose sales have boomed since the credit crunch kicked in.

• Stock up with some basics such as tinned tomatoes, pasta, rice and canned pulses so you can easily run up a scratch meal. A basic kit of herbs, spices and other seasonings like soy sauce and sweet chilli sauce help to zip up cheap ingredients.

• Find your nearest street market (but don't go mad buying food that you'll never get round to eating before it goes off).

• If you've never cooked before, get inspired. There are literally hundreds of cookbooks, websites and videos that will tell you how, including ... ahem ... mine.

• Don't run before you can walk. Start with a type of recipe you like, such as homemade soup or a Sunday roast, and practise it a couple of times before moving on to something else. Develop your own speciality. A batch of homemade scones or muffins or even some well-made scrambled eggs are dead impressive.

Any of the rest of you have any tips to save impecunious students from starvation?