All You Can Eat... Anything You Can Eat

By: Stewart Hall

When students come to college, they are faced with many new freedoms and responsibilities. We are told that there are three things you can do in college: sleep, study, and socialize, and we are told that we will only have time for two of them. Unfortunately, this leads us to forget about many of the other responsibilities we now hold as independent young adults. One of the most important of these is our health, and particularly nutrition. When I was at home, my parents would watch what I ate to make sure I was getting the right food and the right amounts. I love to eat, and I love to eat junk food, so when I first got here, I was ecstatic to find that I had 10,000 meals on my buzzcard and that I could eat anything I wanted at any time of the day. However, like many things in college, this was a new responsibility that I would have to undertake.

The most common reference to this among first year students is the "freshman 15". This is a phrase that refers to the weight gain that freshman in college will experience; however, as this article points out, this common topic directs our attention to a very small portion of the nutrition problem. While weight gain could be a problem with the sedative lifestyle of some college students and the all-you-can-eat cafeterias, I believe that maintaining a balanced diet is a bigger issue than over-eating. I have found that the cafeterias here at Tech actually make it very convenient to get a portion of all of the major food groups and important nutrients (they even post nutrition facts for each entree). On the contrary, they also make it very convenient (and tempting) to just eat a hamburger and fries for every meal.

Unfortunately there is no magical solution to this problem. While the dining halls could attempt to enforce healthy eating habits by serving portioned meals, not only would this take some of the freedom that we all love out of college life, students could just eat at off campus locations. The only real solution is for students to pay attention to what they eat and make sure that they get the right nutrients. Fortunately, there are numerous resources on the internet that provide guidelines for healthy eating.