Mandatory Meal Plans Essay

Did you ever imagine that what goes into your body might depend on something other than your choice? Currently at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at the Daytona Beach campus, many types of campus issues exist. The mandatory meal plans for first-year students has become a very controversial issue. This controversy is caused by the mandatory purchase of at least 14 meals per week, amounting about $3,000. From my experience as a first-year student, I can say that I would save $1,000 an academic year eating the food and the quality I like if I was not required to buy meal plans. In this essay, I will argue that mandatory meal plans do not benefit first year students because of the cost, nutritional value, and dietary restrictions.
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The nutrients that they get from food are what contribute to help all the systems in their body function properly. In their first year, students are in a transition phase between the kind and amount of nutrients they used to get at home and the ones they are getting in college. Instead of helping students make a smooth transition, the food that is offered in the meal plan makes it rough for them. This rough transition occurs mainly occurs because the meal plan 's food does not have high nutritional value. Consequently, the results of the rough transition reflects on the student 's health, academic performance, and athletic performance. For instance, Kelly Harris, a first-year student-athlete, said, "It would be easier to eat healthier without meal plans, that’s for sure.” When you have meal plans and you can eat at the school’s buffet. People do not tend to eat the healthiest of foods prepared when so many delicious, rather than nutritious, options are served. A correlation between fifteen pounds of weight gain and the college freshman year has been made because of meal plans. Many of the meals provided to students with meal plans are not quality meals, just innutritious food. They are prepared ahead of time and have been sitting out. That does not sound healthy or appetizing to me. I think that eating unhealthy food, such as the food provided by the meal plan, is not benefiting my energy level. It could

However, the ones that have a dietary restriction are the ones that are affected the most. First-year students that have a dietary restriction are being highly affected when it comes to cost and health. Since they have a lot of food restrictions, they are not able to eat many types of food offered on the meal plan. Therefore, besides paying for the meal plan, they must also buy groceries to prepare their own food. As a result, they are spending double the amount they should need to spend. Also, their health is being affected, because sometimes they eat something they are not supposed to eat and they get sick. This kind of situation normally occurs because there is not complete labeling of the ingredients that the food is prepared with. Kristen Holman, a first-year student that has dietary restrictions says, "Well a lot of the time the buffet will have food out, and they have signs telling what kind of allergens are in the food, but either the signs do not match the food, or they won 't have a sign, or they add stuff to the food and do not put it on the sign. So sometimes I’ll get a food I think I can eat but it 'll have something in it and will hurt my stomach." To put it differently, the lack of information about the ingredients of the foods offered to students via meal plans is causing discomfort among the first-year students that have dietary restrictions. Lea Raad, another first-year student with dietary