The Dining Hall Blues

With college comes a lot of firsts: sometimes its your first time doing your own laundry, your first time living alone, but the most prevalent is probably that its your first time choosing when and where you eat for every single meal. A result of this new culinary freedom is often the dreaded Freshman 15. However I beg the question, is the Freshman 15 actually a thing or is it rather just a scare tactic employed by our parents to ensure we continue to eat our daily servings of fruits and veggies?

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https://sites.psu.edu/jordanelinder/

You meet a lot of personalities in college, and your dining hall serves like a exhibit, displaying those personas in their most natural form. As you walk through the tables you will probably see toothpick thin girls nibbling on lettuce and sipping water, those whose recent liberation from Mom made them realize they can in fact have ice cream for dinner every single night, and 18 boys who resemble “Super-Super Seniors” balancing 10 plates on one tray. To outsiders these trends might seem to be just stereotyping, however a recent study of college students in Taiwan show a direct correlation between personality traits and eating habits. Some of the most confounding results of this study state that more neurotic people tend to eat breakfast less often, those who score high on the conscientious scale tend to stay away from desserts, and eating out for college students is heavily dependent on employment status. In regards to the Freshman 15’s legitimacy, this study found that freshmen have the least time to eat out, leaving them susceptible to unhealthy dining hall options or simply just skipping meals which slows the metabolism.

Another huge downfall in college students’ diets is a lack of fruits and vegetables, shown both in the Tawian study and a 2011 study conducted at Oregon State University. The OSU study recorded the eating habits of over 500 students, most of them being freshman, and showed that students are only eating about 4 or 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a week. The research went further and revealed that though male students tend to eat more fruits and vegetables, female students tended to be more conscientious when it came to eating healthy and skipped fewer meals. This coincides with the Tawain study, again stating that a student’s susceptibility to gaining weight their freshman year is heavily dependent on one’s traits

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http://www.memecenter.com/search/eat%20your%20vegetables

Ironically, malnutrition has a large factor in the Freshman 15. As presented in this article, the high cost of healthy food in combination with higher living/tuition expenses and lower incomes, cause over 59% of college students to have a phenomenon labeled as “food insecurity”. They often eat less often and when they do eat they eat unhealthy foods lacking any nutrients. This sporadic eating in addition to unhealthy choices cause weight gain, depression, and erratic behavior.

It is clear through these studies that eating habits definitely change once you enter college, especially for freshmen. Whether or not you gain the Freshmen 15 though is entirely dependent on lifestyle and the choices that you make. It might be hard to pass up those cookies in the dining hall and life is too short to stop eating Creamery Ice Cream, but you have to remember that when indulging, lifestyle adjustments need to be made to counterbalance these choices. Though taking the Bloop or Whoop to class everyday might be tempting, walking from East to Willard every morning could help to work off those late-night Pokies. So the question becomes, are you going the Freshman 15’s next victim?

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http://www.memecenter.com/search/eat%20your%20vegetables

 

6 thoughts on “The Dining Hall Blues

  1. Jennafer Palmer

    I’m sad to admit that the freshman fifteen was really the freshman thirty(at least it felt that way). I lived in East Halls my freshman year and aside from only eating brunch in the dining hall after a while, I totally loved the pizza at The Big Onion (I was sad when I heard they were getting rid of it :(, since I’ve only been there one time since I lived in East). I worked out some and ate a salad when I could but it was very hard to stay on top of being healthy and adjusting to college. I definitely had to learn that I needed to balance my eating habits and figuring out a workout schedule. I had to not allow my mind to be psyched out by the idea of working out and just know that its doable and I can do it at my place. Buzzfeed put it in perspective. https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolinekee/lift-those-textbooks?utm_term=.vuQO8OpbN#.pf4xPxnbk

  2. Matthew Porr

    The freshman 15 is definitely controllable. Since I have been here I think that I have been losing weight rather than gaining weight. Everyone is officially an adult that can make their own dietary decisions. Sometimes it is hard to eat healthy but that is not the only factor of maintaining weight. Exercise is extremely important. A combination of both is essential to losing weight while in college or in general. Making the conscious decision to eat at the salad bar and not the pizza parlor is all about self-control. So maybe the freshman 15 is due to lack of maturity/self-control.

  3. Victor William Gregory

    I like your question of wether the freshman 15 exists or wether its a ploy by our parents. When i left for PSU, my mother told me she expected me to loose a freshman 15, not to gain them. Even for those of us who do our best to eat healthy, it is still a challenge, especially when living on a college budget. Healthier food will always cost more, and there will always be more options for unhealthy food than healthy. In the Findley Commons, there are really only two places where you can get healthy food. It feels like the university sets us up for failure when it comes to our meal choices. Here is an article that discusses tips to avoid the freshman 15 while eating in campus commons. http://vitals.lifehacker.com/how-to-eat-healthier-in-college-and-avoid-the-freshma-1723166375

  4. jap5827

    I’m sad to admit that the freshman fifteen was really the freshman thirty(at least it felt that way). I lived in East Halls my freshman year and aside from only eating brunch in the dining hall after a while, I totally loved the pizza at The Big Onion (I was sad when I heard they were getting rid of it :(, since I’ve only been there one time since I lived in East). I worked out some and ate a salad when I could but it was very hard to stay on top of being healthy and adjusting to college. I definitely had to learn that I needed to balance my eating habits and figuring out a workout schedule. I had to not allow my mind to be psyched out by the idea of working out and just know that its doable and I can do it at my place. Buzzfeed put it in perspective. https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolinekee/lift-those-textbooks?utm_term=.vuQO8OpbN#.pf4xPxnbk

  5. Olivia Anne Browne

    Great post! I actually loved reading it. The eating habits that were directly connected with personalities was very interesting and I have never heard of it before. I am a sophomore and I am proud to say I did not gain the freshman 15. I lived in east halls last year and anyone who lived there last year can agree with me the food was well below average; it was disgusting. I refused to eat in that dinning hall. Instead I resorted to weekly trips to Trader Joes and to the pollack and south dinning halls in attempts for a decent meal. Overall, Freshman year I ended up losing weight. Crappy food can help you avoid the Freshman 15 !!!!!
    Check out this post on gross dining hall food !!
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/nyregion/college-cafeterias-get-bad-grades-from-new-york-city-health-department.html?_r=0

    enjoy!

  6. jgb5274

    I liked reading your blog because I can relate to the problem of just going to the dining hall but trying to eat the most healthy thing there to avoid the “freshman fifteen”. There are options there that are good for you like salad and yogurt… but there is also pasta, pizza, and sandwiches that I try not to get ever. It’s definitely possible to not gain weight here at all depending on the choices you make with food, alcohol, and working out. I found this article of many different ways to avoid the freshman 15: http://www.greatvaluecolleges.net/30-great-ways-to-avoid-the-freshman-15-and-stay-in-shape/

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