For my persuasive essay I had to do a ton of research, so I have decided to use the same focus for my advocacy project. For my advocacy project I want to focus on food/nutrition among college students. Everyone jokes about the freshman fifteen, but in all honesty weight gain is something too many college students wrestle with and has been proven to have negative effects on everything academics. A big part of the problem is stress and the availability of bad foods. When students are stressing for an exam its very easy to reach for the bag of potato chips instead of hunting down nutritious food. And it really is a hunt. Walk through any of the convenience stores located in the dinning halls here at Penn State and the majority of the items are junk food. They don’t even offer any fresh fruit or vegetables. With all these tasty bad foods around, its really hard to say no. And then comes the issue of alcohol. One can of Natty Light has 98 calories. Multiple that by four and you have just drank over 300 calories. Add to that some high calorie drunk food like Taco Bell, Canyon, or Grillers and you have a 1500-calorie evening. That’s on top of whatever you ate during the day.
For my advocacy project I am going to propose an app that could be available to college students (divided by schools) that would guide them on eating around campus. The app would include restaurants around campus as well as the dinning halls. In essence the app would help make ordering good food easier by recommending certain menu items based on calorific value, fat content, sodium, etc. I think it would be very convenient if you could go into your phone, find your favorite restaurant, and have an automatic recommendation for what to order off the menu. Nowhere in State College are the nutrition facts on display, and who honestly asks about that type of thing? It becomes very easy to unknowing eat way too many calories. For example, those Panini’s in Redifer that seem innocent are over 1000 calories. That’s more than a big mac.
The app could also recommend low calorie alcoholic beverages, making ordering at the bar a lot easier. All in all the app would make college students aware of what they are eating, and awareness usually leads to smarter decisions. I’m all about grabbing a piece of pizza every now and then, but consistently ordering bad food, sometimes even unknowingly, is unhealthy and is a major contributor to the “freshman” fifteen.
Obviously the audience for my advocacy project is college students. My focus will be smart campus eating. I was originally going to work on the project with my roommate, however her professor is recommending she take on a less ambitious project so we have decided to work separately.
Tags: mariasharpe, minbiole, rclspring2013, wip, wk10
If that app was a real thing, I would be ecstatic. I told myself I wouldn’t, but I’ve gained like 10 pounds since the beginning of the school year and now I’ve been tracking my calories and such. It’s just hard when there are so many options – so by making the app more PSU-specific and easy, I think it would help me and others!
I love this!!!!! I recently became more conscious of eating better and I have found that it is so hard! While many restaurants list nutrition facts on their website, no one bothers to look this up when quickly ordering fast food. In the dining halls, while the buffets have nutrition info, the other places like at Redifer give out no info. And I definitely wish places like Louie’s would have more fresh fruit and things like that. I love your idea of an app that would help with making healthy decisions. It would be so great if this actually happened!
Great idea Maria, in essence would probably work really well for those who actively use it. I know calorie content is required to be posted in certain states (i.e- New York). Not sure why it hasn’t been adopted here yet… Are you familiar with app creation? or are you just proposing the construction of it? Regardless, still a good advocacy project.
I think you have a really cool idea here. I can’t believe something like this hasn’t already been made. I think a lot of students would really appreciate being able to see all these nutrition facts and it would definitely be a step in the right direction. An app like this coul end up being pretty successful. Good luck!
This is a great idea! I hate how the dining halls don’t even offer fresh fruits and they claim the canned peaches are the fruit for the day. You have an automatic audience considering we are on a college campus and we are all confronted with the choice of an apple or pizza daily. The drink app would also be a great idea for the older students going to bars. Cocktails can even be more calories than a Big Mac. If only we could just be content with being fat and happy…
On a side note, Redifer paninis are 1000 calories?! So much for my ‘healthy’ dinners-won’t be going back there anytime soon
I really like your idea. I know that I go for the food that is quickly accessible, which is normally no the healthiest foods. The last few weeks, I’ve been trying to find the nutrition facts for the food at the dining halls, and it is extremely hard unless you’re in the buffet. So many people have smart phones, so an app would be a great way for people to find healthier foods. A smaller step within campus dining, is just adding the nutrition facts to the dining app that already exists. I am slightly confused as to what you plan to do with your idea (write a paper?).