A nitro cold brew sells for $5, and a large mocha for $4.50 at a popular coffee and muffin bar in UC Berkeley’s student union. Downstairs, business is just as brisk at another food emporium.

The provisions there are free.

“I’m low on funds,” shrugged Christopher, a junior, as he stuffed apple juice, a half gallon of milk, a box of peanut butter Puffin cereal and two cans of organic pinto beans and sweet corn — the UC Berkeley Food Pantry’s five-item limit — into his backpack.

Christopher, who asked that his last name not be used, said he depends on the pantry’s donated groceries to make ends meet, especially during emergencies. Someone slashed his tire last week, he said, and now he’s out $110 for a new one. Without the help, he’d have to make a choice: wheels or food.

Faced with such choices, students often skip the nutrition.

Christopher is one of thousands of UC Berkeley students who rely on the Food Pantry for help — records show 1,549 unique visits in September alone — and many are also signing up for food stamps, known as CalFresh, that can provide up to $192 a month for groceries.

More than 500 UC Berkeley students have applied for food stamps since January, up from 111 in all of 2016, and just 41 the year before, said Michael Altfest, spokesman for the Alameda County Community Food Bank, which helps students fill out the forms. Last year, food bank representatives showed up once a month to help the students. Now they have to come every week to meet the need.

Not all applicants qualify. This year, the acceptance rate is 73 percent, up from 62 percent in 2015, Altfest said.

Three years ago, state lawmakers passed AB1930 to make it easier for students to prove eligibility for food stamps. But it’s taken a few years for the ripple effect to hit.

A University of California survey of 9,000 students across all 10 campuses shed light on the need in 2015: Nearly 1 in 5 students, 19 percent, said they had too little to eat “due to limited resources.” Another 23 percent routinely ate substandard food with little variation.

Suddenly, the phrase “food insecurity” — from poor nutrition to outright hunger — became a campus buzz word, and not just on UC campuses.

Aware that some low-income students are stuck on campus during school vacations, Stanford University will keep a dining hall open during spring break for the first time next semester. California State University is working to get each of its 23 campuses equipped with the technology to accept food stamps, which have been provided electronically using debit cards since 2004.

Community college students are especially challenged by soaring housing prices — the two-year schools typically offer no student housing — so on Nov. 9, City College of San Francisco trustees voted unanimously to begin developing a program to help students who are chronically homeless and hungry.

At UC, President Janet Napolitano announced in 2016 that she would spend $302,000 over two years at each of the 10 campuses to expand food pantries and register more students for food stamps through CalFresh.

Last spring at UC Berkeley, Esteban Vasquez became one of those students.

“It’s a huge sigh of relief knowing I can walk into a grocery store and purchase the items I need,” he said the other day.

Vasquez is 21, majors in business and has a management consultant job lined up after he graduates in May. He’s needed his brain cells sharp and his energy well-fueled to make that happen. What he’s needed is food.

“Sophomore year was the most difficult,” he said. “I was out of the dorms and didn’t have a meal plan anymore. It was just rough.”

It’s also rough to talk about, he said. “You feel helpless. You enter this very dark space. In a sense, you become depressed.”

He considered dropping out. He began comparing himself to more affluent students whose families were well equipped to help them succeed. And he acquired an “impostor syndrome,” he said — a sense that he didn’t really belong at UC’s flagship campus.

Born in Oxnard (Ventura County), Vasquez is the youngest of four children. His parents had no schooling at all, he said, and instead spent decades picking fruit “in pretty much any field you can think of.”

At home, food meant eggs, beans and fideo — noodle soup — every day. If he wanted more, his mom warmed up a tortilla and gave it to him with a dab of sour cream and a sprinkle of salt.

“We were pretty much low-income,” Vasquez said. He credits his fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Paul, for referring him to a program for gifted students that inspired his love of reading and set in motion his journey to UC Berkeley and the scholarships and financial aid that would pay for most of it.

But like many students, Vasquez arrived better equipped to handle the university’s challenging academics than other, seemingly simpler hurdles: stress, time — and food.

“He was one of our students in crisis three years ago,” said Ruben Canedo, chairman of UC Berkeley’s committee on basic needs — meaning food, housing, health and security. “He was chronically food-insecure. If he was eating once a day, that was a good day for him.”

So Canedo asked the freshman to help him stock shelves at the food pantry. “I’m a very big believer that students who are struggling — helping others helps them,” he said.

“He was phenomenal. He went from being in crisis to becoming operations coordinator of the food pantry,” Canedo said.

As he learned to manage the finances of others — going on to track funding requests for the basic needs committee, for example, and creating an operations model for its four accounts totaling $750,000 — he learned to manage his own.

And to take better care of his health.

Shortly after 6 in the morning he’s at the gym — students join for free — then heads back to the seven-bedroom home he shares with nine people. His share is $800 a month. The CalFresh program provides roughly $50 a week for food.

Breakfast is usually a smoothie he makes with frozen fruit, from mangos to goji berries. For lunch, Vasquez preps a jar of oatmeal, raspberries, chia seeds, flaxseeds, chocolate chips and coconut shavings, plus a spinach salad, and carries them around to eat as needed. Dinner is usually pasta with vegetables.

“I tell my friends I’m plant-based — unless you take me out to eat,” he joked. As for CalFresh, “I think without it, a lot more students would be struggling.”

Vasquez said his own CalFresh-inspired super diet is also influencing his mom’s cooking, and she’s been asking him for ideas.

“So I recently bought her a recipe book in Spanish,” he said. “She said it was the first book she’s ever owned.”

Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov