Since social media has provided a way for people to share pictures of their food, the college diet has become something of a joke. For every post of someone’s delicious top-tier food, there’s a comment in which an anonymous student says that they’ve eaten nothing but ramen (or similar cheap, easy food) for the last 6 weeks. Asking any of these students why they’ve only eaten cheap, terrible foods is opening oneself to endless jabs about being out of the loop, with only one or two individuals actually explaining it. They’ll claim that they, or other students, eat these foods because they are cheap to buy and easy to prepare when low on time. This could be interpreted as if they eat it because it’s convenient and doesn’t dent their wallet enough …show more content…
Just don’t tell me exercise,” you yell at this faceless author’s sarcastic words, thinking he can’t hear you. Be patient, this is supposed to be fun for both of us. The study showed that college students with the best diets were those that thought about what they ate and acted on those thoughts, buying from organic and sustainable sources. This group was less likely to meet fat consumption targets when compared to the traditional shopper, though. If you’re going to try to be more conscientious about your food, probably keep in mind that the recommendation for fat intake is less than 35%, but don’t go too low and try to stick to mostly unsaturated fats like those found in some fruits like avocado. There was one group identified by the study which was worse than the convenience shoppers, however. The non-shopper, the most common group among students living on university grounds, though relatively small, at half the size of the convenience shopper group. This group is something of a nutritional nightmare, having worse dietary intake for calcium, dairy, fiber and fat than traditional shoppers. This group also was very likely to drink soda frequently, found to be as often as 5 times per
...College students are the next generation of food consumers just starting to purchase and prepare their own food, setting purchasing habits that will follow them into their lives as they start their own careers. These habits will shape what food is in demand, and therefore what food is produced. Not only do college students hold financial power over the future economy, but they must make the decision of whether to become the next unhealthy generation, that will also indoctrinate their children to accept the level of food quality that is currently labeled as junk food as a standard level quality of food.
I don't think our school lunch is healthy because it has fat and too much sodium. Although it is good it is fattening it is the reason for much of the obesity in the U.S. Many kids have no other option to eat the unhealthy school lunches or they will be hungry.
Meriam-Webster Dictionary defines food as “material taken into an organism and used for growth, repair, and vital processes as a source of energy” (Mish). Food is simple, yet humans have made it very complex. In the United States of America, food has become more of a hobby than a nutritional need. Every family gathering, holiday, and birthday celebration contains food of some sort. Types of food are customary at different times, like birthday cake at a birthday party, or stuffing at Thanksgiving. There is an entire holiday dedicated to dressing up and giving children candy (Halloween). One of the popular holiday foods is meat. An average of 10 million land animals (not including fish or other water dwelling organisms) are brutally slaughtered
While many people face certain issues with campus dining, one of the few issues that really bother me is the dining hall hours. Ball State has the times listed on their website which most of the time they do not stay true to. Here I will list the times for you; breakfast is 6:45-10:29, lunch is 10:30-4:29, and dinner is 4:30-midnight. While I have gone in during those times to eat they dining halls are usually all packed up and starting to get ready for the next mealtime. I especially feel that they do not stay true to the dinnertime. All too often I will go into a dining hall around 8:30 and they main cuisines will already be packing up. This leaves people who are either working on homework or at work themselves hungry when they get the chance to finally eat. 82.35% of the people who took my survey said that they spent their time studying or working on homework. I asked if anyone has ever skipped dinner because they did not like the food options after everything has closed. 70.59% said yes to having skipped dinner. While this may be a problem I feel that one of three solutions could be the answer to fix it all. I believe that the dining hall could either leave one specific dining hall with all options open until twelve, have all of the dining halls open until twelve as said by Ball State, or better yet, change the dining times.
Some complain about having too much food and others complain about not having enough food. Since most of us, depend on the dining halls for food, we don’t necessarily think about what we eat; we just eat what’s available (Mei). Some students on campus, however, actually don’t get the luxury of often going to the dining halls, usually because of the type of meal plan they chose. Even without having an accessible dining hall, college students could still make their own meals without the use of processed foods. For example, instead of eating ramen, we could actually utilize our small kitchen that is provided for us in all of the dorms. The small kitchen isn’t often used for making actual meals, instead it’s used to heat up frozen meals. In the three months that I’ve been at Denison, I’ve only seen some international students try to make a meal within our small kitchen. It’s mostly seniors, who live in the senior apartments, or upperclassmen, who live in the Homestead – a type of residence hall similar to senior apartments, that utilize the
After taking a closer look at the American diet, it 's clear to see Americans are in a lot of trouble. The average American diet is filled with lots of greasy fast food, large cuts of meat, salty junk food and sugar-laden sodas. This tradition is then passed on to the children and creates a legacy of ailments, disease and a lower quality of life. To many people, plant-based eating sounds like a death sentence. In reality, it 's all about getting creative with the foods you already like. It also involves intentional meal-planning and organization. However, your health is worth it. The ability to experience a better quality of life should be motivation enough to start changing your eating habits. Consider a few of these simple ways to incorporate plant-based eating into each meal without eliminating delicious taste.
Christie, Kathy. “Stateline: Even Students Are What They Eat.” The Phi Delta Kappan 84.5 (2003): 341-342. PDF file.
The anticipation of attending college floods teenagers with numerous thoughts. Living on their own, going to class when they please, staying out as late as they want, and surviving on food the dining hall provides or what they buy at the grocery store. More free time, or lack there of, may bring students spinning downwards towards bad eating habits and malnutrition. Rolling out of bed five minutes before class means grabbing a coffee on the way. Too much homework or a big project might mean skipping a healthy dinner and cooking some Ramen noodles or snacking on chips all night. This is where the “convenience foods” come in which are factory made dishes or meals that only need to be heated up or need just one or two additional ingredients.
No one wants to be or feel like they are overweight, unhealthy, or unattractive. When someone in the general public looks in the mirror or steps on the scale, and they are not satisfied with what is being shown, one of the first ideas to bubble to the surface is dieting. There are so many dieting solutions out there and one of the most popular are the fad diets. Dieting should be about getting healthy and losing weight in a healthy way. Fad diets however, are about losing a lot of weight in a disproportionally short amount of time. Due to the loss of weight that the dieter wanted, when they reach their goal weight, they stop doing the fad diet and go back to their regular diet. This causes the weight that they shed to be put back on again in a disproportionally short amount of time, which is also just as unhealthy. This cycle of losing and gaining weight is only one of the many dangers of fad diets.
Do you remember your favorite “School Lunch”? I do, I essentially had two favorites; pizza and hamburgers with fries. Think back, wasn’t there at least one school lunch that the lunch ladies made that everyone was so excited to eat. Kids that habitually brought their super hero lunch box with thermos would leave it at home and be in line for pizza or burgers and fries. We could also go back for “seconds”, it was the best meal of the week including what was served at home. The federal government has been involved in the NSLP (National School Lunch Program) since 1946 with the implementation of the National School Lunch Act. These initial programs developed the commodity distribution program for schools, institutions, needy households, summer
People eat food every day without thinking twice about it, because it is a necessity for us to live. How often do you think about what is in the foods that you eat? How many calories does it have? Are there any vitamins and minerals in it? Is it high in fat? For most of us and especially college students who live a busy life on the go, the answer to that question is probably no. Since becoming a recent graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania Academy of Culinary Arts, I have been more interested in food and what people are eating. Also since more young Americans are becoming obese I want to find out what they are eating and where. Going to college and seeing how students have poor eating habits I want to find out why they are eating this way. Is it because they are away from home for the first time? Or is it because that is the only food that is available for them? I also want to find out if students would eat healthier if it was provided for them? My hypothesis is that students eat unhealthy because it is more convenient for them. There is usually no time to cook a homemade meal and most college students are always in a hurry so it is easier to pick up takeout. Also most college students don’t know how to cook. I also believe that most college students don’t care if the food is unhealthy for them, as long as it tastes good. Hopefully, in the following pages I will uncover the wide world of college eating.
First semester of college, I was living in the dorms called Eaton, which is located next to a dining center and a “fast food” place called Clyde’s. For me, it was very easy to walk a half of a mile down the sidewalk to get something fast to eat. What I didn’t realize was how bad their food is for you and how often I made an appearance there. It wasn’t until winter break when I came home for a couple weeks and started to get back to my old ways of eating when my mom would prepare every meal, which would include some type of meat, potatoes, and fruits and vegetables. I never noticed how bad I was eating until I was home and started eating more responsibly. Luckily I moved to a different dorm where
A typical first-year college student, as described from research at OSU, often skip meals and lacks the recommended amount of fruit and vegetable intake ("News and Research Communications," 2011). Often students are too busy with their schoolwork to sit down and have a proper meal, and causing them to lean towards the “easy foods”, which is often ramen. Either college students go for the easy option, which is often ramen, or they are constantly eating the wrong type of foods. However, not only are college students doing this but so are many other people, thus creating our horrible culture of eating industrialized foods. I have friends who are in different completely different from Denison. My best friend, Aileen, actually attends the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which has a completely different environment from Denison. She claims, “Urbana is almost like a little city in which we sometimes have to take a bus to get to a class that’s all the way on the other side of campus” (Lopez). Denison is not exactly a city. I like to think of it as more of a community than anything. It doesn’t take long at all for us to get from one side of campus to the other. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know much about the food served at her campus, so I can’t speak much about it but I can still tell you what a college student could do to help in the change. But first let’s learn a little background
When one goes away to college, their life changes dramatically. They are forced to make changes in their own lives in order to adapt to college life. When one is in high school and living at home, their eating habits and personal hygiene practices are for the most part controlled by their parents. They are told what to eat and when to eat it. They are told to keep their room clean and to take their vitamins, etc. When one moves away to college, they are on their own. There is no one telling them to clean their room, or to do laundry or what they have to eat. In some colleges and universities, it is required that freshmen live on campus and eat at least two meals a day in the dining hall. This isn't necessarily for the university to monitor a student's eating habits but rather to get the student acquainted with the campus and other people living there. Food served in college dining halls has not been known for it's nutritional value. However, over the past couple of years college chefs have been working to change that. While a lot of students have committed to eating the healthier foods and trying to stay healthy, the vast majority lives on pizza and taco bell or any other cheap fast food chain that is open until the late hours of the night. College is a fast paced environment and fast food caters to college students. In this fast paced environment, students more often than not neglect their health and personal hygiene and the consequences range from obesity to deadly eating disorders.
My freshmen year when I lived in a dorm and all my food was prepared for me, I ate pretty well. I made sure to have a balanced diet and to eat a lot of nutritious foods as opposed to processed foods. However, now that I live in an apartment and am entirely in charge of cooking my own meals, my eating habits aren’t great. I tend to buy a lot of canned or microwavable meals that are quick, easy, and cheap to make. That is what stood out to me most on the days I recorded; how much I eat simply because it’s cheap and convenient. Although I have a lot of room