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Ulam is a traditional salad that contains high levels of antioxidants and is commonly consumed in raw form. However, the average ulam consumption among the low-income Malaysian population was only ½ serving daily. Thus, this study aimed to explore the motivators and barriers to ulam consumption among residents of low-cost housing areas (household income RM4849 or $1015.50) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Six focus group discussions were conducted with 27 Malay residents aged 18–59 years in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The researchers asked the participants a series of semi-structured questions. All the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Two researchers coded the transcripts independently, and several themes were identified. The data were analysed using Nvivo version 12 software.

Three main factors for ulam consumption were identified in this study: personal, environmental and behavioural. The motivators and barriers were identified based on nine main themes and 16 sub-themes.

The results of this study identified potential areas for an effective intervention to increase ulam intake among residents in low-cost housing areas.

This work has the potential to identify the factors that have an impact on consumers' ulam preferences to help fulfil daily vegetable recommendations.

The aim of this study was to determine the levels of satisfaction (food quality, service quality, ambience, price and portion) among postgraduate Health Sciences students on the cafeteria facilities in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Kuala Lumpur Campus. In Malaysia, the total number of postgraduate in higher institution increase from 75,199 in 2007 to 85,236 in 2010, an increment of 12 per cent. The increasing numbers of higher education postgraduates on university campuses has unquestionably raised the expansion of demand for food service availability and quality on campus.

A self-reported questionnaire was to 86 subjects at Faculty of Health Sciences, UKM, from September to November in 2012.

The findings showed that ambience and service attributes turned out to be the most dissatisfied attributes. Malay and non-Malay post-graduate Health Science students showed no significant difference on the satisfaction toward the four attributes. Respondents believed that increasing menu variation and introducing franchise outlet were the two supplementary factors that may increase satisfaction level.

The major drawback of this study is the inability to generalize findings to the students’ satisfaction toward UKM KL food service because data of the current study were only assessing postgraduate students.

The points developed from this study clearly indicate the level of satisfaction among postgraduate Health Science student against food service system in one of the famous research university in Malaysia, UKM.