Abstract
The least of the problems facing the modern college student should be issues of nutrition, yet food is an integral and essential part of life; from the instant a human being comes into the world to the day they leave it, we require nourishment. More recently, there have been health initiatives aimed at revolutionizing the food industry and the way humanity views what they eat, but the changes made can only do so much of the work. The rest of the responsibility lies with the individual to make a choice to eat healthier and live a better life. The issue becomes less a matter of what we're being given in, as an example, a university setting, but rather what we expect to eat, what we want to eat, and when it finally comes down to it, what we really do end up eating. Changes to lunch programs at universities can be made, but it is the job of the student body to know what they should do and in the end, issues of food and health come very much down to the decisions of the individual.
Food University: The Expectations of College Students vs. What They Really Eat
A university campus is supposedly a place of higher learning. Individuals across the globe attend colleges to acquire knowledge, make invaluable connections, and better their lives as a whole, but while accomplishing these goals, they face a series of setbacks. Financial troubles and taxing mental exertion aside, the least of the problems facing the modern college student should be issues of nutrition. Yet food is an integral and essential part of life; from the instant a human being comes into the world to the day they leave it, we require nourishment. More recently there have been health initiatives aimed at revolutionizing the food industry and the way humanity views what they eat, but the changes made can only do so much of the work. The rest of the responsibility lies with the individual to make a choice to eat healthier and live a better life. The issue becomes less a matter of what we're being given in a university setting, but rather what we expect to eat, what we want to eat, and when it finally comes down to it, what we really do end up eating.
At Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey as well as at more than 30,000 other locations across the globe, France's Sodexo stands as one of the largest food providers in existence (along with competitors Aramark and Chartwells). Sodexo has contracts with not only schools, but government organizations, corporate workplaces, and even inked a recent deal to provide meals to United States Marines. All of this would assumedly indicate that the food they provide is either satisfactory to the general populous or at least cheap. Research however, at least on a minute scale, appears to disagree.
Brian Flynn, General Manager of Sodexo Services at Rowan, explains that the cost of the food is not a primary concern when the company buys and ships it to their customers. Rather, he says, the issue at the forefront of their minds is the health and desirability of the food. Spending more than $100,000 a week and receiving substantial food shipments at least 5 to 6 times each week, the cost and freshness of the food can no longer be called into question as factors in what Sodexo serves. Yet the student body still seems eternally displeased with the options they are given and demand more and more. Flynn describes this as a flaw not inherent in the system but one that lives and thrives in the people themselves. The idea that no matter what is presented to us, as students, will never be good enough for any of a plethora of shallow and ill-conceived reasons.
While we may hope that we are provided with healthy, nutritious options, the vast majority of research has begun to indicate that what we actually consume is another matter entirely. It is then not the options that call for examination, but more our ideas of what the options should be and actually are. The truth is, that "[c]olleges and universities provide numerous opportunities to positively influence physical activity, nutrition, and weight management behaviors of large numbers of older adolescents and young adults in an educational setting" (Lowry 19). Definitions of healthy eating, however, are individual and susceptible to bias and discrepancies depending on the person being considered. According to a study, university students "often describe healthy eating as consuming all food groups, with the associated notions of moderation and balance" (House 14) but such a technique assumes that all food groups are beneficial and necessary. The most dangerous part of students' eating habits when at college is not, as popularly believed, the food itself, but is rather within the students and what, in their minds, makes a meal.
With the expectation that healthy foods should be provided and unhealthy ones should be avoided, a major issue in student health is that of desires. Oftentimes, the healthy culinary choices aren't picked simply because they appear unappealing when compared to foods that are higher in fat and sugar. As human beings, we are predisposed to favor sweet and savory flavors like those found in sucrose-laden desserts and drinks or the saltiness of fried and grilled fare.
At Rowan, Sodexo's food court and Marketplace both implement the popular "Grab and Go" style of educational institution catering in which students pick up and pay for what they want in an a la carte style setting. These foods are prepared in kitchens and brought out to be put on display where students can then see their options, choose what they want most, and get out quickly to eat and resume their daily activities. In both of these locations on Rowan's campus, there are salad bars and each of the other stations within these locations includes vegetarian, gluten free, and soy-based options to meet many dietary requirements. James Boushka, marketing director for Sodexo at UC Davis has also said that, on that campus as well as many others, Grab and Go makes up about 18% to 20% of dining service business, which begins to indicate that students desire quick and readily available food rather than options that they might have to compile themselves or have specially prepared like salads or gluten-free dishes, respectively.
In interviews, many Rowan students of differing genders, age, and dietary background believe that these options take too long to prepare, are oftentimes less available than their unhealthy counterparts, and are generally less satisfying to eat. In a way defending themselves but also pointing out a very important fact, "Aramark, Sodexo and Chartwells, as well as food processing companies like ConAgra, wrote letters [to government representatives] arguing, among other things, that children may not want to eat healthier food" (Komisar). Indeed it appears that the only people on a college campus who might still attempt to eat healthier than others are vegetarians and individuals whose weight directly affects their day-to-day actives (like student athletes). But even then, it has been found that vegetarians on college campuses are "less food neophobic and similar in their restrained eating when compared to non-vegetarians" (Spaeth 859), which essentially means that the same restrictions are placed on them, if not even stricter ones. yet such individuals still find a way to adhere to their diets and remain healthy, indicating that such feats should be possible for any other student (permitted they actually try).
What defeats this attempt by students to eat healthily is, as a general rule, the idea that what we desire is what we are going to eat. When our minds see a particular food and tell us that we want it, we are going to try and consume it no matter the nutritional value. Evidence has begun to indicate that many university students across the country believe that consumption of high-fat or glucose compromised (foods whose sugar content negates their nutritional benefit) along with exercise and eating fruits and vegetables will essentially offset each other and create a negation of bad calories with good nutrients (Lowry).
This attitude towards eating and nutrition at schools as a whole indicates an ambivalence towards health that cannot be allowed to continue. Research has "found that privately managed school cafeterias offered meals that were higher in sugar and fats and made unhealthy snack items -- soda, cookies, potato chips -- more readily available" and that economic factors begin to play a part when one can "pay a little less and [their] kids get strawberry milk, frozen French fries and artificial shortening" (Komisar). The cheapening of mass-produced sugary and fatty foods makes them more appealing to the wallets of the ones paying for them as well as the taste buds of those eating them. This again begins to point towards a dangerous path that university students have walked since childhood and will continue to traverse into adulthood.
In the same study conducted by Richard Lowry and his associates, it was found that "although 35.0% of students [at universities] were overweight or obese based on BMI, 41.6% considered themselves to be slightly or very overweight, and 46.4% reported they were trying to lose weight at the time of the survey." The means that the students were attempting to lose said weight were however extremely dangerous, with multiple parties reporting that in addition to exercise and dieting, they had attempted using diet pills, vomiting, and laxatives in order to gain control over their weight. Yet another issue then comes into focus; that of the inappropriate reactions of students to their unfamiliarity with nutrition issues. Indeed those students who do perceive themselves as overweight would rather turn to unnatural methods of achieving a weight goal, anything (it would seem) to avoid changing their diets or cutting out foods that they enjoy eating.
The last problem with what college students are eating is that of time. A Spanish study revealed the following:
"Lunch was the main energetic meal for both genders. Breakfast bring a 18.4% for males and 15.1% for females of daily total energy, whereas dinner provided 25.2% and 23.7% of the daily energy intake for males and females, respectively. About 3.6% for males and 2.6% for females in our study reported to omit breakfast. No significative [sic] differences were found with macronutrients average intakes of cholesterol, dietary fibre [sic], fat, carbohydrates and protein in both genders from some meals and snacks." (Soriano 1253)
Essentially stating that daily nutrition values aren't anywhere close to being met. This doesn't fall on the universities or the food suppliers like Sodexo as many students would like to believe. The issue here isn't the food anymore, but rather what could be going through the minds of those eating it. Students know what they expect, but these expectations change in order to give themselves excuses as to why they're not eating in a more healthy way. Their desires shift to direct them towards things that taste good over things that are good for them. Which means that what they finally eat is a product of their own thoughts and wants rather than productive needs.
In such instances where unhealthy eating habits develop, it is mainly the responsibility of the individual, but society also plays a fairly large role. Raised to eat what tastes good rather than what is healthy while also living in cultures (primarily American in this conversation) that place an enormous emphasis on body image, it becomes nearly impossible to reconcile and find a happy medium. Efforts to overhaul and improve eating in educational settings needs to place education and knowledge at the forefront of any initiative. HOPE (Health for Oakland's People and Environment) is a group in California that aims "to address childhood obesity and health disparities through systemic interventions addressing equitable access to healthy food and safe, attractive places for active living" (Herrera 430) and by doing so improve the lives of everybody in such a community.
While such a collaborative might not be solely focused on food, it does what many universities should strive to do. It creates togetherness and educates people on what they should be eating in addition to making such foods readily available. At colleges across the globe, healthy food is, contrary to popular opinion, being provided. What the systems lack is a way of telling students that the food is there and how they can get it and supplement it for their otherwise unhealthy fare. In a study that aimed to assess students' awareness towards food safety and nutrition, it was found that "students enrolled in dietetics, arts and science (physical sciences), and veterinary medicine had significantly higher knowledge scores…[in addition] women who had enrolled in any college course that included food safety information had significantly higher attitude and practice scores" (Unklesbay 1175). Essentially, those students who were educated specifically about food or nutrition were the only ones who had an increased awareness of related health issues. Those who did not experience the same or similar courses were left to their own devices and were made to make their own decisions about food which could generally be described as misinformed and often unhealthy. "For the entire US population, daily caloric intake has increased on average by 300 calories since 1980, with no accompanying increase in physical activity" (Story 221). We're becoming unhealthier both as a culture and as a species, and we can no longer lay the blame on the people that provide us the food, but ourselves for being irresponsible consumers of it.
In the same interview in which he detailed Sodexo's food-planning techniques and guidelines, Brian Flynn also take a moment to speak more candidly on the Rowan community's views on food as a whole. He theorized, when prompted to, that the student population at Rowan is a complicated and conflicted one. While the men and women eating on-campus every day were raised to eat healthily, it becomes difficult for them, due to varying factors like time constraints and simple human nature, to resist the urge to fall into habits of consuming sugar and fats.
The products containing these things are faster to access, tastier to eat, and far more addictive than the fruits, vegetables, and grains our bodies are meant to process and break down. As of the year 2000, estimates indicated that more than half of adults (54%), 12% of adolescents, and 14% of children in the United States were overweight (Lowry), and these numbers have done nothing but increase in the time since. Changes to lunch programs at universities can be made, but it is the job of the student body to know what they should do. In the end, no matter what the options provided to them, it is the responsibility of the individual student to make intelligent and informed choices to ensure that they live a healthy and fulfilling life.
Compiled, Drafted, and Edited by Kayleigh Fishwick, Alexander Kuhn, Ashley Shropshire, & Chelsea Wanielista
At Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey as well as at more than 30,000 other locations across the globe, France's Sodexo stands as one of the largest food providers in existence (along with competitors Aramark and Chartwells). Sodexo has contracts with not only schools, but government organizations, corporate workplaces, and even inked a recent deal to provide meals to United States Marines. All of this would assumedly indicate that the food they provide is either satisfactory to the general populous or at least cheap. Research however, at least on a minute scale, appears to disagree.
Brian Flynn, General Manager of Sodexo Services at Rowan, explains that the cost of the food is not a primary concern when the company buys and ships it to their customers. Rather, he says, the issue at the forefront of their minds is the health and desirability of the food. Spending more than $100,000 a week and receiving substantial food shipments at least 5 to 6 times each week, the cost and freshness of the food can no longer be called into question as factors in what Sodexo serves. Yet the student body still seems eternally displeased with the options they are given and demand more and more. Flynn describes this as a flaw not inherent in the system but one that lives and thrives in the people themselves. The idea that no matter what is presented to us, as students, will never be good enough for any of a plethora of shallow and ill-conceived reasons.
While we may hope that we are provided with healthy, nutritious options, the vast majority of research has begun to indicate that what we actually consume is another matter entirely. It is then not the options that call for examination, but more our ideas of what the options should be and actually are. The truth is, that "[c]olleges and universities provide numerous opportunities to positively influence physical activity, nutrition, and weight management behaviors of large numbers of older adolescents and young adults in an educational setting" (Lowry 19). Definitions of healthy eating, however, are individual and susceptible to bias and discrepancies depending on the person being considered. According to a study, university students "often describe healthy eating as consuming all food groups, with the associated notions of moderation and balance" (House 14) but such a technique assumes that all food groups are beneficial and necessary. The most dangerous part of students' eating habits when at college is not, as popularly believed, the food itself, but is rather within the students and what, in their minds, makes a meal.
With the expectation that healthy foods should be provided and unhealthy ones should be avoided, a major issue in student health is that of desires. Oftentimes, the healthy culinary choices aren't picked simply because they appear unappealing when compared to foods that are higher in fat and sugar. As human beings, we are predisposed to favor sweet and savory flavors like those found in sucrose-laden desserts and drinks or the saltiness of fried and grilled fare.
At Rowan, Sodexo's food court and Marketplace both implement the popular "Grab and Go" style of educational institution catering in which students pick up and pay for what they want in an a la carte style setting. These foods are prepared in kitchens and brought out to be put on display where students can then see their options, choose what they want most, and get out quickly to eat and resume their daily activities. In both of these locations on Rowan's campus, there are salad bars and each of the other stations within these locations includes vegetarian, gluten free, and soy-based options to meet many dietary requirements. James Boushka, marketing director for Sodexo at UC Davis has also said that, on that campus as well as many others, Grab and Go makes up about 18% to 20% of dining service business, which begins to indicate that students desire quick and readily available food rather than options that they might have to compile themselves or have specially prepared like salads or gluten-free dishes, respectively.
In interviews, many Rowan students of differing genders, age, and dietary background believe that these options take too long to prepare, are oftentimes less available than their unhealthy counterparts, and are generally less satisfying to eat. In a way defending themselves but also pointing out a very important fact, "Aramark, Sodexo and Chartwells, as well as food processing companies like ConAgra, wrote letters [to government representatives] arguing, among other things, that children may not want to eat healthier food" (Komisar). Indeed it appears that the only people on a college campus who might still attempt to eat healthier than others are vegetarians and individuals whose weight directly affects their day-to-day actives (like student athletes). But even then, it has been found that vegetarians on college campuses are "less food neophobic and similar in their restrained eating when compared to non-vegetarians" (Spaeth 859), which essentially means that the same restrictions are placed on them, if not even stricter ones. yet such individuals still find a way to adhere to their diets and remain healthy, indicating that such feats should be possible for any other student (permitted they actually try).
What defeats this attempt by students to eat healthily is, as a general rule, the idea that what we desire is what we are going to eat. When our minds see a particular food and tell us that we want it, we are going to try and consume it no matter the nutritional value. Evidence has begun to indicate that many university students across the country believe that consumption of high-fat or glucose compromised (foods whose sugar content negates their nutritional benefit) along with exercise and eating fruits and vegetables will essentially offset each other and create a negation of bad calories with good nutrients (Lowry).
This attitude towards eating and nutrition at schools as a whole indicates an ambivalence towards health that cannot be allowed to continue. Research has "found that privately managed school cafeterias offered meals that were higher in sugar and fats and made unhealthy snack items -- soda, cookies, potato chips -- more readily available" and that economic factors begin to play a part when one can "pay a little less and [their] kids get strawberry milk, frozen French fries and artificial shortening" (Komisar). The cheapening of mass-produced sugary and fatty foods makes them more appealing to the wallets of the ones paying for them as well as the taste buds of those eating them. This again begins to point towards a dangerous path that university students have walked since childhood and will continue to traverse into adulthood.
In the same study conducted by Richard Lowry and his associates, it was found that "although 35.0% of students [at universities] were overweight or obese based on BMI, 41.6% considered themselves to be slightly or very overweight, and 46.4% reported they were trying to lose weight at the time of the survey." The means that the students were attempting to lose said weight were however extremely dangerous, with multiple parties reporting that in addition to exercise and dieting, they had attempted using diet pills, vomiting, and laxatives in order to gain control over their weight. Yet another issue then comes into focus; that of the inappropriate reactions of students to their unfamiliarity with nutrition issues. Indeed those students who do perceive themselves as overweight would rather turn to unnatural methods of achieving a weight goal, anything (it would seem) to avoid changing their diets or cutting out foods that they enjoy eating.
The last problem with what college students are eating is that of time. A Spanish study revealed the following:
"Lunch was the main energetic meal for both genders. Breakfast bring a 18.4% for males and 15.1% for females of daily total energy, whereas dinner provided 25.2% and 23.7% of the daily energy intake for males and females, respectively. About 3.6% for males and 2.6% for females in our study reported to omit breakfast. No significative [sic] differences were found with macronutrients average intakes of cholesterol, dietary fibre [sic], fat, carbohydrates and protein in both genders from some meals and snacks." (Soriano 1253)
Essentially stating that daily nutrition values aren't anywhere close to being met. This doesn't fall on the universities or the food suppliers like Sodexo as many students would like to believe. The issue here isn't the food anymore, but rather what could be going through the minds of those eating it. Students know what they expect, but these expectations change in order to give themselves excuses as to why they're not eating in a more healthy way. Their desires shift to direct them towards things that taste good over things that are good for them. Which means that what they finally eat is a product of their own thoughts and wants rather than productive needs.
In such instances where unhealthy eating habits develop, it is mainly the responsibility of the individual, but society also plays a fairly large role. Raised to eat what tastes good rather than what is healthy while also living in cultures (primarily American in this conversation) that place an enormous emphasis on body image, it becomes nearly impossible to reconcile and find a happy medium. Efforts to overhaul and improve eating in educational settings needs to place education and knowledge at the forefront of any initiative. HOPE (Health for Oakland's People and Environment) is a group in California that aims "to address childhood obesity and health disparities through systemic interventions addressing equitable access to healthy food and safe, attractive places for active living" (Herrera 430) and by doing so improve the lives of everybody in such a community.
While such a collaborative might not be solely focused on food, it does what many universities should strive to do. It creates togetherness and educates people on what they should be eating in addition to making such foods readily available. At colleges across the globe, healthy food is, contrary to popular opinion, being provided. What the systems lack is a way of telling students that the food is there and how they can get it and supplement it for their otherwise unhealthy fare. In a study that aimed to assess students' awareness towards food safety and nutrition, it was found that "students enrolled in dietetics, arts and science (physical sciences), and veterinary medicine had significantly higher knowledge scores…[in addition] women who had enrolled in any college course that included food safety information had significantly higher attitude and practice scores" (Unklesbay 1175). Essentially, those students who were educated specifically about food or nutrition were the only ones who had an increased awareness of related health issues. Those who did not experience the same or similar courses were left to their own devices and were made to make their own decisions about food which could generally be described as misinformed and often unhealthy. "For the entire US population, daily caloric intake has increased on average by 300 calories since 1980, with no accompanying increase in physical activity" (Story 221). We're becoming unhealthier both as a culture and as a species, and we can no longer lay the blame on the people that provide us the food, but ourselves for being irresponsible consumers of it.
In the same interview in which he detailed Sodexo's food-planning techniques and guidelines, Brian Flynn also take a moment to speak more candidly on the Rowan community's views on food as a whole. He theorized, when prompted to, that the student population at Rowan is a complicated and conflicted one. While the men and women eating on-campus every day were raised to eat healthily, it becomes difficult for them, due to varying factors like time constraints and simple human nature, to resist the urge to fall into habits of consuming sugar and fats.
The products containing these things are faster to access, tastier to eat, and far more addictive than the fruits, vegetables, and grains our bodies are meant to process and break down. As of the year 2000, estimates indicated that more than half of adults (54%), 12% of adolescents, and 14% of children in the United States were overweight (Lowry), and these numbers have done nothing but increase in the time since. Changes to lunch programs at universities can be made, but it is the job of the student body to know what they should do. In the end, no matter what the options provided to them, it is the responsibility of the individual student to make intelligent and informed choices to ensure that they live a healthy and fulfilling life.
Compiled, Drafted, and Edited by Kayleigh Fishwick, Alexander Kuhn, Ashley Shropshire, & Chelsea Wanielista