Between skipping meals, late night snacking and the "freshman 15," college students are notorious for unhealthy eating. Incoming students leave home-cooked meals behind and are making their own diet choices for the first time.
According to Nutrition 101 for Students Away from Home provided by Yale-New Haven Hospital, the choices college students make concerning their diets are often unhealthy.
As Lisa Tartamella-Kimmel, a registered dietician at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, explains, "College students don't come close to meeting the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Their diets also tend to be low in fiber and high in artery-clogging saturated fat."
This generalization seemed to hold true on the Hopkins campus where eating healthy used to mean sacrificing quality.
While "Terrace" was still in existence and Sodexho was responsible for on-campus dining, "eating healthy and leaving feeling satisfied was hard," junior Becky Wolff explained. "The unhealthy stuff was all they were good at making."
Despite the difficulty of eating meals on campus that are both, other culprits are responsible for the generally poor student diet.
Research has shown that about 10 percent of college students drink more than 15 alcoholic beverages each week. Excessive drinking and drinking-related snacking are largely to blame for the "freshman 15."
Another more serious threat to healthy diets in college students is an increased prevalence of eating disorders. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are more common among college girls than the general population due to increased anxiety about weight and academic achievement.
"Current research suggests that the freshman 15 myth may do more harm than good," Tartamella-Kimmel said.
She added, "Sending kids to school with this preconceived notion may cause them to become preoccupied with their weight and make extreme dietary decisions that could potentially set the stage for eating disorders."
After last year when Hopkins finished fourth in "Is This Food?," a ranking of the worst college dining by The Princeton Review, Hopkins students returning to campus were eager to try the new Aramark dining facilities. According to David Furhman, director of Dining Programs, several new healthy options have been added to on campus dining halls.
The new options include more whole grain breads and cereals, extensive offerings of fresh produce and preferential cooking methods like grilling, roasting, broiling and steaming.
The new Fresh Food Café seems to be living up to these new additions. More healthy and filling options are available. When Furhman was asked what advice he would give to students looking to foster a healthy diet he responded by saying, "It's a matter of choice. There are no bad foods, just bad food choices."
He added, "While we strive to offer a wide variety of healthy options, we also support the notion of balance and moderation in any diet."
Junior Lisa Dolan understands that choice well. She summed it up in saying, "When I want lettuce, I want quality lettuce, and when I want ice cream, I want quality ice cream. Eating healthy isn't that hard as long as the healthy food is as good quality as everything else."
