The Effects of a College Environment on a Students Health
Introduction
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.
"The Freshmen fifteen" is one of the most dreaded rights of passage into college. It is a well-known fact among college students, that one gains fifte...
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...ne's home life. There are so many opportunities including trying new foods, learning about different kinds of people, and learning how to focus in a fast paced, noise filled environment. While it can be hard to adjust to this new environment, it is a great experience that will cause one to become a more cultured and well-rounded person. Even the bad things mentioned in this paper, sickness, poor diet habits, etc.; these things can build character in a person. God gives everyone challenges in their lives and expects them to ask Him for the help they need. God gives people only what they can deal with. With God, anyone can deal with anything. He gives us challenges for a reason. When people take on these challenges, they become stronger and are able to deal with more of life's challenges that will come in the following years. There is a reason for everything.
William Zinsser’s essay “College Pressures” emphasizes the struggles students have in trying to conquer the college milestone in life. Zinsser believes that college has lost the authenticity of the overall goal of gaining knowledge for one’s own interest, rather than the overall need of going. He sympathizes with struggles college kids go through and hopes to provide insight on the overall situation. One of his major points are that succeeding the first time is not always the best way in learning, and that sometimes students need to fail in order to properly learn. The author mentions the “Four pressures, economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure” and how there are “No villains; only victims” that fall
It depends on what specific situation the student is stuck in to determine which foods they 're living off. My assumption of their daily meals is first, breakfast is one piece of fruit and a breakfast sandwich from a fast-food joint. Then, lunch or dinner is one entree of pizza, fried chicken, or a burger. Occasionally the student may snack off a bag of chips or a candy bar, but other than that, I can’t say that most students are eating healthy; I’ve seen at my college snacking mostly on chips while taking a break from class. Luckily, there some solutions to help to change the eating habits of the students. I discovered in Victoria Li’s article “Easy Diets for College Students” some helpful tips for the struggling students. She suggests “While opting for burgers fresh off the grill seems tempting, adhere to the habit of filling half your plate with fruits and vegetables, then filling the remainder with whole grains and lean protein” (2). In other words, it’s okay to have a greasy burger, but just as long you have something healthy to go with it, leading to a good balance of protein and energy Li says. As for the students going hungry because of their tight budget, some colleges or nearby locations may have meal donors. Li mentions in her article about the importance of not skipping meals as she says “Feeling famished due
In conclusion the moral of this story is simple- colleges should take more responsibility and initiative when it comes to the food choices and the health of their students. The college needs to offer better food choices in their dining areas. The hours of operation should be between normal eating hours so the option to eat at an unusual or indecent hour is obsolete, and proportions should be strictly regulated and enforced. While most would argue that it is the students fault for gaining weight, I believe the facts presented are obvious in pointing you in the other direction. The school has all of the power and needs to address this issue accordingly before the epidemic becomes bigger than what we can handle.
The University of a Florida offers meal plans for students who wish to have a meal ready for them rather than worrying about what they are going to eat, or perhaps cook, throughout the day. The problem with this idea however, is that students oftentimes do not take full advantage of this system. Whether it is cooking, eating out, or even going home on the weekends, there are several factors that can get in the way of taking full advantage of the meal plan. This dilemma often leaves families asking the same question: is buying the meal plan that is provided by colleges actually worth the money? While buying a meal plan for college appears to make sense for many incoming freshmen, it does not always translate into the most efficient use of their money.
When I arrived here at college I was extremely disappointed with the selection of food here in the cafeteria. I frequently found myself eating only hamburgers and pizza over and over again, simply because I did not like the other choices. About four months into the school year I had do go to the doctor for a virus and when the nurse weighed me I was a little surprised by what I saw. I had gained a little over ten pounds, close enough to what some refer to as the “Freshman 15.” It is a common fear among college students that they are going to gain fifteen pounds during the course of adjusting to college life. However experts have stated that the idea of the so called “Freshman 15,” is not that accurate. Every college student is obviously not going to gain fifteen pounds. However I believe that it is possible and it is a problem for many college students. College life completely changes eating habits among college students. Most students do not make the right choices about eating and exercising. College students across the country are severely unhealthy in their behaviors, and for some students the “Freshman 15” may be a reality.
With an unlimited meal plan and buffet-style meals, do we students know how big our portions should be? If we are accustomed to being served super-sized portions, we might not realize when we are serving ourselves over-sized portions in our dining halls. In fact, researchers have found that increased portion size is an even greater problem in cafeteria settings like ours, noting a positive association between larger food receptacles and increased consumption(2). A correlational study at Cornell found significant weight gain in freshmen during the first twelve weeks of school and identified that both the “all-you-can-eat” dining hall style and student snacking on “junk-food” were key variables explaining a positive linear relationship with weight gai...
During the 1990-1991 school year, dietary records of 1,912 college students were examined to identify the amount of meals students skipped and which types of food students were actually eating. The study found that 22% of the students skipped their breakfast, however students were recorded to snack at least once a day. Furthermore, the study also found men consumed foods with higher calories and higher amount of fat. The study appears to be more quantitative, however qualitative practices must have taken place when interviewing subjects about their meals to input into the dietary records. The findings propose that college students should be eating more vegetables and fruits, along with consuming less carbonated beverages and dishes with a high amount of fat. Although, this is a well done study, it is limited because it was done over 20 years ago, so eating habits of college students might have changed within this time. For instance, within these 20 years, the perception of soda has changed drastically, which illustrates the need for this type of study to be more relevant to college students today. Moreover, much of this study is focused on what these students are eating, but I also believe finding out about how students attain their meals is important for the understanding of a college student’s dietary
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
One factor of the freshman 15 is the student’s living environment. Students living on campus in residence halls are more prone to weight gain than students living at home with their parents or off campus (Provencher et al., 2009). This is due to the availability of food on campus at various universities that studies were held. While students living at home with their parents often have home cooked meals, often dining halls in college campuses serve food with an all-you-can eat buffet style, where students are free to eat as much as they like. Students living away from ...
My Freshman Year- What A Professor Learned By Becoming A Student by Rebekah Nathan is about a college professor who investigates college students’ lifestyle in their freshman year. There has been many times when college professors have assigned a great deal of work and expected it to be due in a short period of time. To the professors, they may think a week is enough time. However, to students like myself it looks to be only two or three days. As college students, especially in our freshman year, we have a lot of pressure. We have about three to four classes, school activities, and of course, our own personal lives. Sometimes college professors may fail to remember that this is a point in student’s lives where they have a great deal of responsibility but little time to cope with the new circumstances. There is peer pressure, lack of concentration, and so much going on all at one time. Many times professors wonder why students cheat, be rude, less motivated, careless of their work. A college professor Cathy Small goes by the pseudonym name Rebekah Nathan in attempt to see what it is really like to be in a college student’s place.
Upon arrival at the State University for freshman orientation, students are immediately sorted into categories. One's dorm provides the initial identity as students march to countless events chanting the cheers that have been handed down from upperclassmen. However, these stereotypes are all in fun and are rather temporary as the welcomes fade and all begin to feel a part of the student bo...
...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.
As I mentioned earlier, school food is not appetizing. Most of the lunches are served everyday. There is not much variety to choose from either. This is when going off campus would be good. Students would be able to get better food with more options to choose from. There are also the students who go home for
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.
As freshman, we came home from school with the mentality that we were no longer children, but rather had entered into a new stage of life. Everything seemed different and new; we weren’t the big kids on campus anymore. We no longer were the persons being looked up to, but rather were the persons looking up to an entire school of older students. We remember joining our firsts clubs, going to dances, and having Orientation days.