Eating Disorders : The Secret Battle Of College Campuses

Body image and beauty standards have changed drastically over the years. By establishing impossible standards of beauty and bodily perfection, the media drives people tobe dissatisfied with their bodies. This dissatisfaction can result in disorders of behavior as people try to achieve unreachable goals with unhealthy

Samantha Callahan, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University; Danielle Patrick, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University; Sara Roderick, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University; Kahla Stygar, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University.

Perhaps the biggest factor that causes students to gain weight is the adjustment from eating at home to eating at college. A student from Chicago State University wrote in the school paper that, “Students in their first year away from home are sometimes not experienced in choosing foods or balanced meals” (French). The free-for-all campus style eating allows for unlimited choices of food and no parents to tell students what they can or cannot eat. Dietitian Ann Litt is also quoted in a Washington Post article in stating that, “the all you can eat concept in most college food services is an invitation overeat” (Linder). College dining halls are set up like fast food restaurants, and some even contain a McDonalds or a Pizza Hut. Fast food style eating really has no nutritional value, other than lots of fat and calories. In an article which examined the ways which students eat nutritional professor Christina Economos stated that more than fifty percent of students are eating too much fat, and seventy to eighty percent are getting too much saturated fat. She states that lack of fruit and vegetable consumption and the eating of mostly processed food is the main cause of weight gain among students (Linder). When students enter the dining hall they need to remind themselves that eating healthy is important.

These young women feel an overwhelming need to make their bodies “better” in order to look like a model in a magazine. This may seem harmless, but it leads to young women turning to extremely excessive exercise routines and restricted eating in order to obtain their dream bodies (Fitzsimmons-Craft p. 144). Habits such as these lead to plenty of health problems, including dehydration, anorexia, and bulimia. The combination of body dissatisfaction and social comparison is toxic to young women’s physical and mental health.

Students are surrounded by unhealthy food off or on campus. In a research done by nutritionists, they came to a conclusion that students without meal plans wasted more money on fast food and consumed more fast food (‘Cost and Calorie of Fast Food’). This was all due to convenience of the students without meal plans, since they cannot get into dining halls, and most do not have time to cook or do not know how to cook, therefore they turn to fast food for a quick meal. Due to the fact that there are plenty of fast food restaurants on or nearby mostly any university campus in America. Researchers in the Cost and Calorie of Fast Food also conducted that the average students waste $71 on fast food and consumed about 12,000 of fast food per month (pg.944). People may say that it is the students fault for not eating right or wasting money on fast food, but it’s actually the colleges that deicide what type of food to surround its students with. There is no escaping fast food on a college campus in

Eating as a college student can have it shares of eating problems, healthy, deep fired, homemade and fast food. When in college, there is a moment when we are free of problems when suddenly one problem shows up with another one showing up few moments with a third one not far apart equaling not one, not two but three problems that need to be fixed. From one of those three problems is hunger because it’s common for people to be hungry anytime of the day. Eduardo Martinez’s interesting argument article “A college argument”, has an interested argument that its target audience is college students because for starters, it has the subject college within the title making it easy to whom it talks about.

Tiggemann, M. (2004). Body image across the adult life span: Stability and change. Body Image, 1, 29–41.

Obesity is a common problem found across all demographics in the U.S., and is increasingly more prevalent amongst college age students. The “Freshman 15” is a real phenomenon that many young people face in their first year of independence from their homes. Students have their first experiences in choosing meals for themselves. One of the main reasons why college students put on this added weight when they leave home is the selection provided by their universities dining center. A quick glance at NDSU’s dining menus allows one to see that the deserts are what headline the menu, with the entrée options listed towards the bottom, as can be seen in FIGURE 1. This menu design influences the choices of the students; it subconsciously encourages

Media has greatly evolved since starting, but has bad evolved with it? Print media, digital media, and now social media surround everybody today. Media surround us when we go to the store and see magazines, when we sit and home and watch TV, and especially when we go online. Over time, media has created its own idea of beauty. Medias influence on body image can’t be overlooked. Media and eating disorders have a cause and effect relationship. In Helens article, “Eating Disorders: A growing problem on college campuses”, she expresses that, “In today’s media-saturated world, young women are bombarded with one message: be thin” (Helen, 2014, Paragraph 9). Today media shows that to beautiful you have to be an unhealthy weight. If media doesn’t change its view of beautiful, then the rate of eating disorders triggered by media will go up. We need to figure out a way to help now.

Julianne Tarullo, a journalist from the Huffington Post and press coordination of NBCUniversal Media, explains the nutritional challenges of a college student in her article “Nutrition in College: Answers From the Experts.” Weight gain, eating habits, fad diets, drinking, and weight management are some of the nutritional challenges that a college student may face. Tarullo’s article relates to a topic of why college years are a nutritional challenge, which is a topic discussed in chapter 7 of “Get Fit Stay Well.”

Having bad eating habits can cause vastly eating disorders and illnesses. Students attending college that do not eat right are most likely to conceive an illness or become overweight. “An unhealthy diet is a major risk factor for becoming overweight and obese,” (McNight). Freshman 15 is most likely to get to the students that have This is something to think about when it comes to meal plans. The majority of the meal plans offered at any college are high in fats and calories. By consuming all of these foods you are more likely to having this problem.

Obesity has risen over the years. The United States now has one of the highest obesity rates. Bad eating habits are usually the cause of this pandemic. For the past few decades, college dorm foods have led to these habits. The more unhealthy food choices are, the harder it is for people to resist these foods. Colleges serve a variety of unhealthy food in their dining halls that contributes to students’ lower GPA. By eating healthier, students can maintain a healthy weight, focus better in school, and increase their school performance to a higher grade point average (GPA).

Eating disorders are well known in the American culture. It is most likely that people in America know at least one person who has or is currently suffering from an eating disorder. Eating disorders take many forms such as bulimia, anorexia nervosa, binge-eating, and even obesity. The focus of this paper however will be solely on anorexia nervosa. It will breakdown the basics of anorexia as well as compare and contrast the movie Starving in Suburbia with scholarly literature.

The challenge to adjust to high school life usually corresponds to other moments of development in the adolescent’s life with such changes taking place which include puberty and related concern about body image, changes in social cognition, increased responsibility and decreased dependency on parents (Santrock, 2016). These changes were observed in my teen through certain reports such as how at 13 she was nervous about the transition to high school and worried that her friendships would change. She also experienced physical changes and concern about her body image as at age 14 she expressed being teased about having a flat chest and requesting new kinds of bras to remedy this. This body concern also came as she began gaining some weight during puberty making her refuse to wear certain clothes that she felt accentuated her weight problem. These reports show that this newfound concern about body image that was developed is so significant to adolescents that it tends to

This study is aimed to focus on the transition of high school students into their first year of college, and how the effect of their diet is being manipulated. Also, this study will determine if the substantial weight gain will lead to a person opening doors for later on diseases.