Why do colleges make their meal plans for students very costly? Are they too expensive? Are meal plans or college food healthy? Throughout the 21st century college has become more essential to attend and get a job after graduating. As compared to back then when with just a high school degree an individual could live off a decent job. However, as college became more important, the price of college also increased including, the cost of dorms, tuition, fees, books, and most importantly meal plans. Within all of the college expenses, the price of meal plans has also increased. Food is one of the most important necessity a human being needs to survive. Furthermore, the price is not the only factor, the health and regulations of a student’s meal plan also comes into play. Colleges provide a huge variety of food, most of it being fast food. The main research question …show more content…
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
college student wastes 142 lbs of food per year, and with 20.5 million students in the US, the
For many college students, dining halls and other dining facilities are essential because they provide daily nutrition. Campus dining feeds millions of students, and may even be the only meals that some students can get. College students spend thousands on meal plans every year, so when it comes to dining it is important that it is clean, sustainable and most importantly convenient. On campus dining services have failed at working around college student’s schedules. Most dining facilities close around the time of 9:30 p.m. or even earlier forcing students to seek alternative options that cause them to empty their pockets, and go off campus when unnecessary. College campuses should extend dining hours and require at least one dining hall to
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
Students need healthy, nutritious food choices to fuel their mind and bodies. Students experiencing food insecurity either don’t have enough food to eat or are eating a poor, nutrient- deficient diet. Either way, poor diets can affect the student’s physical and mental health which can lead to interruptions in their learning. Universities need to gather statistics on the portion of their student population affected by food insecurity and work towards a remedy. Not only does the student benefit from university interventions, but the university benefits by graduating students that are healthy, well-educated and have an instilled sense of the community involvement needed to invest in the future.
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.
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
The three-day diet analysis was interesting. There were many positive attributes to it and definitely negative ones. Over the course of the three days, which were Friday, Saturday and Sunday: and figured this would give a good depiction of what I was consuming on a regular basis. In some places I was consuming more than I should be and in some I was consuming less than I should be. There were also those places were I was getting just the right amount. It is so interesting to me to be able to find out what I am consuming and how I am consuming it. Being an active male, it was most interesting of what I ate, what my average of the three days were, and the plan on how I would correct the way I eat to make it a more healthier lifestyle.
Should freshman in college be required to purchase a meal plan? Many students worry about how to spend their money on meal plans. The question here is, is it necessary? Think about it. Is it really worth all those hundreds of dollars to purchase a meal plan if you will not even have the chance to eat all the meals of the day every day? Even though many suggest Freshmen should purchase a meal plan, Freshman in college should not have to because they are too expensive and not many students have the financial aid to help pay off the plans. Not just that, but also the fact that they will not be consuming the majority of the food given. They will be throwing out and wasting their money. Freshman need to eat a
Students are in class yawning and struggling to stay awake, but one student is wide awake. The other students asked, “How are you so alert?” The students says that he ate the new healthy menu. So, the next day everybody tried the new lunch and was wide awake for their classes. Changing the school menu to a healthier menu is a fantastic idea because students will have more energy, earn better grades, and have a different food choices.
On the other hand, you may be thinking, “$3.75-$4.75 is cheap for a school lunch”, “Who would pay for it?”, or “If it’s good enough for school standards, then it MUST be healthy”. $3.75-$4.75 is not cheap with the economy failing and families having to stretch their dollars. About a year ago, the lunch was $2.50. If a student bought a $4.75 lunch every day for a month, about thirty days, the total would be $142.50. Multiply that by twelve months and it is $1,710 a YEAR. Compared to the $900 a year with the $2.50 meal, lunch prices ARE pretty darn expensive. Secondly, if enhanced foods and lunch system were implemented, some might say it would take a huge amount of money to actually start the project. However, if tax dollars are enough to pay for billion dollar roads, then it’s enough to start a respectable lunch system. A portion of the tax dollars could be used instead of it all going to highway and road construction. Finally, the food may fit school standards, but it may not be such a good choice. Most people eat 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day, depending on their needs. How healthy could a tortilla with beans, or a piece of meat slapped between two slices of bread, be? Not to mention the amounts of saturated fat, trans fat, and salt! If you checked the
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).
how amazing the tacos would taste, and how happy everybody would be. Even now, I
No matter how you choose to plan out your paleo meals, it won’t take long for you to get the hang of it and it will come as natural as picking up that take out menu. The option to go with a meal plan service may prove to be a good way to get you into good habits. Try out a sample, free, or trial program and see what works best for you and your household. This, paired with some good paleo knowledge of what you should and shouldn’t eat, will help give you the necessary skills to plan meals on your own in the future.
This paper will examine the main factors contributing to the choices made by first year students in terms of their eating habits. It will employ a qualitative-survey of twenty first-year students living on UBC residence. In order to determine the main factors contributing to the current state of the average student’s diet, students will be asked about their daily consumption of each food category, their reasons for such diets, their cooking abilities as well as their primary sources of income and the allocation of that income towards food. Using Canada’s Food Guide to evaluate student eating habits, this study will propose that unhealthy and inadequate student diets are largely a result of the rising costs of studying in Vancouver, most student’s inabilities to prepare their own meals as well as unhealthy foods being cheaper and more accessible than their healthy alternatives.
One of the hardest things to understand is that fast food is also introduced into our schools from kindergarten to university: for example, many schools give our children's, french fries, burgers, pizza, cheese sticks, and other foods that are affecting our kids' health. Also, we can see that in most of the schools from junior high to university have a lot of vending machines fill with chips, chocolate, candy, sodas,etc.... Now,many of the companies see our students and the school as a sales point. In Austin article “Food and beverage marketing in schools: A review of the evidence” he mentions that “Children and adolescents spend many of their waking hours at school where they consume approximately one-third of their daily energy intake” (2). Our students are powerless because they do not choose what is in vending machines and convenience stores. We are always trying to eat healthier but there have been always the temptation of eating chips and soda. How can we stop it? That's the big question that everyone ask themselves. If the world continues like this our student will be in danger because as parents and as a community, we are powerless to stand up and do justice.