College Kids and Eating Habits

College is one of the most difficult times of life to practice healthy eating. Because of your busy schedule, the amounts of stress, and pressure from friends to party, you may find that healthy eating is impossible. However, with a few tips you can make the impossible seem much more manageable. Healthy eating is possible in college as long as you are willing to work at it.

Make smart decisions when you are eating at your college’s cafeteria. Most students are provided with a variety of options every day, and although the dessert bar may be very tempting, try to limit the number of times you visit it every week. If your school has a buffet style cafeteria with many choices, try to choose one food from each of the food groups. Avoid anything that is processed, covered in cheese or dressing, and greasy.

Scheduling times to eat is also important. When you register for classes, look at the day with meals in mind. You should have enough time in the morning to get ready for the day and grab a quick meal, either in your dorm room or at the cafeteria. Around the middle of the day, make sure that you save time for lunch, and have a timeslot for dinner before 7 PM to avoid eating late at night. You should also plan times to stop for nutritious snacks, like fruit. If your professor does not mind, you can also take these snack foods with you to class. This is a good question to ask during the first day of classes.

The weekends can be very challenging for college students because of the pressure to go to parties, where the main food is usually pizza and the main beverage is usually beer. Ordering pizza and other similar foods can take an otherwise healthy diet and throw it down the tubes. If you plan to go out for the night and can’t be sure if there will be healthy food choices available, grab a light meal before you leave and avoid greasy calories. Having pizza and other such “college” foods, like wings or tacos, can be fine once in awhile, but if it becomes a weekly event, you’re looking at trouble.

Of course, alcohol is also a great way to ruin a diet. Beer and mixed drinks have a lot of empty calories, and so skipping them altogether is a great idea. If you must drink, choose diet sodas for mixing your drinks, ask for red wine if it is available, or drink light beer. Again, these treat are fine once in awhile, but drinking alcohol every week will only make you pack on the pounds.

An option that concerned parents may consider is looking into a multivitamin or nutritional supplement to ensure that your “young adults” are getting what they need for good basic health, no matter what they actually end up eating. I myself have two sons in college that I make sure have access to good, quality nutritional supplements to keep them in peak health. They each take a vitamin gel pack (100% of their USRDA of the 12 essential vitamins and up to 75% of the 10 essential minerals) and an antioxidant gel pack (a multitude of antioxidants and 5 servings of their fruits and vegetables for the day in a tasty berry gel pack) every single day.
Taking the gel packs gets ME, their mom, off their backs and I get the assurance that even though they may not eat as well as they would if they were home, they are still able to maintain peak health through nutritional supplements. In our family, it’s a win-win situation!