In part 2 of our in-depth feature on student eating habits, students talk about why they eat they way they do, and experts, including the always-helpful Bart Hipple of Dining Services, offer their thoughts on the phenomenon.
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Whether too many calories or too few fruits, experts have plenty of evidence to state that student diets are unhealthy. But, for many students, the reasoning behind what they eat is more complex than simply choosing not to count calories.
Back at the Stamp food court, 21-year-old Brett Layman is sitting with his friends and enjoying his lunch. He admits to eating a significant amount of unhealthy foods, but like many students, Layman says that his limited food budget (and overall lack of money) restricts his ability to eat better. He looks for ways to save money everywhere he can, which means mostly forgoing fruits and vegetables—they spoil so quickly, he says—and sticking to things he can buy in bulk, including cereal and tuna fish, the latter of which he sometimes eats straight from the can.
He also looks for ways to get food for free, no matter how odd the circumstances surrounding how to get it. Layman and his friends Sam Furnish and Rachel Robb, both 20, regularly attend Chick-fil-A restaurant grand openings, which advertise that the first 100 customers through the door receive “Free Chick-fil-A for a Year,” or 52 coupons for free meals.
While they must often travel hours to get to new locations, fight crowds and stay out all night to be one of the first through the door, Layman and his friends have made this a regular occurrence. Layman personally has been to about eight grand openings, and the group eats at the on-campus Chick-fil-A three or four times a week with their coupons.
“We go to great lengths to find deals,” Furnish says.
Because of the overarching need to be thrifty, Layman believes that it is hard to eat healthy as a college student. Robb, sitting across from him, disagrees, saying that it is possible—she’s the proof.
“That’s just perception,” Robb says. “You can find healthier things if you look.”
Robb says she was raised to keep to nutritious food—growing up, her Mom only let her get sweet cereals once a year on her birthday—and still manages to eat healthy at school without spending much money.
To do this, she shops for bargains, cooks at home and skips fast food except for her free Chick-fil-A. While she admits that she often spends over an hour in the store looking for deals—and would prefer to eat more expensive food—she eats well on her budget.
“I spend $100 on groceries a month,” Robb says. “And that’s pretty much all I spend on food.”
Even when eating on campus, Dr. Nancy Brenowitz-Katz has seen that making healthy choices is possible. In her view, the two big campus dining halls—The Diner and South Campus Dining Hall—both offer a wide variety of choices and highlight their healthy options. In the past, she has given students an assignment to find creative and healthy meals at these halls, and was impressed with what they created—including a grilled chicken salad using chicken from the sandwich line.
Despite this availability, Brenowitz-Katz notes that chicken tenders and French fries, two items that are high in fat and sodium and low in nutrition, are among the most popular items at the dining halls. In fact, according to sales information provided by campus dining services, chicken tenders, French fries and pizza ranked in the top five food items sold this February (in fairness, whole fruit and salads were the other two in the top five).
Bart Hipple, Dining Services’ assistant director for communication, believes that these figures reflect students making food choices by themselves for the first time.
“I think that, especially at first, students are attracted to foods they enjoy but don’t have unlimited access to at home,” Hipple says. “There is no one saying ‘eat your vegetables’ or ‘skip dessert,’ so many are reveling in the freedom to eat poorly.”
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Check back tomorrow for our exciting conclusion, which looks into the consequences of these unhealthy eating habits.
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