By Olivia Spannring
The College Diet – The Three Criteria
When thinking about the typical college student’s diet, things such as cup noodles, mac and cheese, energy drinks, pizza, and fast food immediately come to mind. While there is something to be said about the “college student aesthetic” with notions of late night pizzas shared with friends or an energy drink to get you through a long study session, I find it concerning that none of these stereotypical foods provide true and healthy nutrition. Furthermore, I’d like to argue that college life, especially at Colorado State University (CSU), shouldn’t be sustained by these unhealthy junk foods, and that it is feasible for the college diet to transition into a healthier and more sustainable one. A viable possibility to begin this change can be found at the dining halls right here at CSU; I propose that dining halls can offer educational services to teach university students how to provide nourishing and affordable meals for themselves in preparation for living independently.
As a college student myself, I am already aware of the reasoning behind why college students often partake in consuming junk foods. There are three primary factors that us college students value above all in what we eat: Cheapness, Simplicity, and Accessibility. For instance, fast food, a common source of meals for college students, fulfills all three of those conditions: most fast-food options offer a full meal for under $5, they require no preparation and are made within minutes for you, and most fast-food options can be found within walking distances from college campuses and are open late into the night. Another stereotypical college food source meeting these criteria is cup noodles, which I can purchase for less than $2 at the nearest dining hall marketplace (which is a minute walk from my dormitory) and requires only warm water to be ready-to-eat. Identifying these three essential criteria is important because it allows us to create attractive but healthier alternatives to university student diets. But why do these criteria exist? How can CSU food services aid college students in creating a healthy food foundation as they enter the adult world?
Cheapness
More than 30% of college students nationwide struggle with food insecurity. This can be caused by a multitude of financial reasons, including expensive tuition and meal plans, and increased living prices. Furthermore, 22% of students must care for child dependents, 14% of which are single parents; therefore much of these individuals’ finances are being used to support their families and children. Even students that are food secure tend to be frugal with spending their money to accumulate funds to be used on an apartment or independent living in their later years at university. This is especially true for CSU students, as renting in Fort Collins can prove to be expensive, around $1,600 monthly payments are needed to afford an apartment in Fort Collins. Apartment prices have been rising astronomically high in recent years, forcing college students to spend large amounts of their income on affording apartment living (or saving up money to be able to afford off-campus living). CSU has already begun programs to assist students in affording meals, for example, Rams Against Hunger, which gives all enrolled students in the university, even those living off-campus, access to free meal swipes for food sources on campus. After understanding how thin a typical college student’s finances are, it is safe to say that cheapness is perhaps the most valued characteristic of food sources for CSU students; however, let’s investigate the other two primary factors involved in a student’s food choice.
Simplicity & Accessibility
CSU students (and all other university students for that matter) are often fully occupied with schoolwork or their part-time (and sometimes full-time) jobs, and are therefore interested in simple, or quick and easy, meals. As a result of this, many students seek less-nutritious take-out and fast-food sources to maximize their time. The third and final criteria involved in a college student’s decision on what foods to consume is accessibility, specifically in relation to distance. 18,200 students enrolled in fall of this year come from other states, while only 9,756 students are from within the state of Colorado. This means that over 65% of CSU students are nonresidents in Colorado, and it is likely that the majority of these students do not have access to a vehicle to drive them to farther-away markets and stores. With this, the food sources for these students must be within walking distance of their residence or CSU’s campus to be realistically accessible to these students.
Applying the Three Criteria
After discovering that college students value cheapness, simplicity, and accessibility when determining food choices, a typical university student’s circumstances relating to food choice are revealed. This includes details such as food insecurity, low finances, minimal free time due to excess schoolwork or jobs, and easy accessibility, which we can employ to best organize a way to assist CSU students in developing healthy yet affordable dieting practices. I propose that a meaningful way in which CSU food services can help its students to establish sustainable food practices is through educational classes and events offered at dining halls on topics of meal planning and the cultivation of culinary skills.
Illustrative photo. Source : Bonappetit.com.
Meal Planning
Meal planning, colloquially referred to as “meal prep”, is a method for individuals to pre-prepare meals a few days or even a week prior to eating it. As stated by the Harvard Nutrition Source, meal planning is a great tool towards healthy eating. Some common meals used in meal prepping are soups, salads, and rice-based dishes. Investigating the advantage of meal planning from the perspective of our three criteria, it passes with flying colors. Meal prepping has many benefits, most notably saving money through the reusage of ingredients and leftovers. Importantly, the notion of meal prepping also fulfills all three criteria valued most heavily by college students: it is affordable, often utilizing leftovers and reusable ingredients, it is simple, requiring few ingredients and taking only minutes to prepare before eating (after pre-packaging and planning meals on a weekly or monthly basis), and it is easily accessible, being stored in a fridge or pantry until the day it was planned to be consumed. From my personal experience, meal prepping also answers another common issue college students often struggle with, which is finding one-person recipes. Growing up, many of us students gain exposure and experience preparing meals, though most of the time, each recipe serves at least four people, which is fantastic in the family setting, but simply unrealistic when you’re living alone. Having meal preps allows us to create single-serve meals that will allow college students living alone the means to provide for themselves with minimal excess food. If the concept of meal planning was introduced and taught to CSU students at dining halls, it would equip college students with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively sustain themselves with healthy meals through organized weekly or monthly planning. Having these educational services available on campus would allow students to access this knowledge at their convenience, and if these services were free, it is guaranteed that a multitude of students would be interested in joining.
Culinary Education at CSU
Another area of interest that could provide a meaningful and viable solution to aiding CSU students in bettering their diets is through the possibility of creating culinary foundations through events hosted on campus. Alarmingly, 17% of college graduates don’t know how to cook. While this shocking lack of ability may be in part due to takeout culture and fast-food popularity trends found on most college campuses, it is evident that the lack of a culinary foundation in college students is largely due to the problems indicated by the aforementioned three main criteria: many college students don’t know how to provide food for themselves because they often order the cheaper, more simple, and accessible fast-food or ready-made alternatives found within their locality; in fact, more than 70% of university students eat fast food at least once daily. This proves that the vast majority of college students, CSU students included, rely heavily on unhealthy and unsustainable food sources. To prepare these individuals for a healthier life in their later college years and later life post-graduation, I propose that our CSU dining halls offer healthy cooking lessons (which would be convenient and easy for students to access) for students, featuring beginner-friendly, plant-based and nutritious meals with few but healthy ingredients.
Our Food Education at CSU
I believe that cheapness, simplicity, and accessibility, are all highly valued factors for college students in choosing food sources, and that they should be met as criteria when developing meaningful ways to aid CSU students in creating a healthier diet for themselves. To start, our dining halls should offer educational services teaching CSU students how to create meal plans or how to prepare nutritious meals in preparation for long-term healthy living.
About the Author
I’m a first year Biomedical Sciences student at Colorado State University with a double major in French. I was accepted to the university’s Honors Program and am enrolled in the seminar “You Are What You Eat”, and have learned about food’s relationship with humans and it’s role in developing our individual and societal identities. While taking this course, I have also worked at the local hospital here in Fort Collins as a nutrition assistant, providing over 300 hours of patient care from a food lens. In participating in these two activities, I have become very passionate about food in its relation to human life and living, and am interested in educating my fellow peers and university students about the importance of food.
Works Cited
Colorado State University SLiCE. (2023, September 28). Rams Against Hunger. https://lsc.colostate.edu/slice/community-engagement/rams-against-hunger/#RamsAgainstHungerMealSwipeProgram
Fall 2023 Demographic Factbook. Colorado State Institutional Research Department. (2023, August). https://www.ir.colostate.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2023/07/FactBook_FY23.pdf
Feeding America. (2023). College student hunger statistics and research. Feeding America. https://www.feedingamerica.org/research/college-hunger-research
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