Experts urge healthy student eating habits
Students with unhealthy eating habits often don’t have places to learn them.
By SARA RAWDA
As students struggle to balance multiple majors and minors, internships, jobs and involvement with student organizations, many skip meals or forget to eat. Developing healthy eating habits is a necessary skill, but students are often forced to push this goal to the side in pursuit of academic and career success. Students lack the opportunity to put healthy habits into practice, said Patrice Barber, a registered dietitian at Student Health.
“[Students] haven’t had the opportunity to learn to cook,” Barber said. “They haven’t been the person in charge of planning all the meals at home … it’s just something new to learn, something new to experience.”
Amir Arya, a senior majoring in computational neuroscience, said he finds that he and other students seek the most convenient meals because time is of high importance. Outside of dining halls, campus food revolves around fast food chains such as Panda Express, Arya said.
“To an extent, universities such as USC … cater to [fast food chains] because they understand that the market is looking for something fast, something filling and something cheap,” Arya said. “Students want fast options, but the fast options tend to be unhealthy.”
College students also have difficulty eating regularly throughout the day. Ideally, Barber said, eating regularly means having something to eat within an hour of waking up and every four hours after. If eating a full meal isn’t possible, it’s okay for students to occasionally replace a meal with a snack to help maintain energy levels, blood glucose, mood, focus and concentration — all of which are maximized by fueling up with food throughout the day.
The next step to better eating habits after implementing regular meals throughout the day, Barber said, is creating a balanced diet. This means eating a combination of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Eating all three together helps the body maintain nutrients longer, which allows for energy to last up to four hours.
“Your body [uses food] quickly,” Barber said. “Carbohydrates last in our body anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, and then they’re done. Protein works in your body two to three hours after you eat it. Fats work three to four hours after you eat it.”
When a meal isn’t available, Barber recommended snacks such as frozen vegetables, beef jerky and dried fruit that are nutrient dense and can be convenient for college students. She said she doesn’t think students intentionally skip meals, but that there are ways to overcome this issue.
“You’ve got a backpack full of a computer and books and notebooks and everything,” Barber said. “[Get into] the habit of also putting those snacks into your backpack, the ones that will sustain you, even if you need to miss a meal … knowing where on campus you can get your favorites also helps.”
Myths about food groups may cause students to adopt diets that lead to nutrient deficiencies. Ketogenic and Atkins diets affect individuals in different ways and do not always have intended results for users. (Ana Hunter / Daily Trojan)
Dr. Dani Gonzales, a licensed clinical psychologist and associate director of the Eating Disorders Program at the Keck School of Medicine, said one of students’ top concerns when it comes to their approach to food is that they don’t get individualized feedback on what their bodies need. On campus, students can get this feedback through EatWell Bites, a virtual nutrition education series by USC Healthy Eating that provides tips and resources for making balanced food choices.
Myths about food groups, such as carbohydrates and sugars being bad for you, can lead students to adopt low-carb diets such as ketogenic or Atkins diets. Restricting food groups can have diverse long term and short term effects on different individuals and can cause nutrient deficiencies.
Gonzales encouraged students to be curious about food behaviors, food habits and where they get their information about food groups from. She said to pay attention to the thoughts and emotions connected to food beliefs and to find out if they are substantiated in scientific research or not.
“Whenever folks get in a restrictive mindset, whether it’s avoid this or eat that, … you really run the risk of creating new beliefs that then lead to unhealthy behaviors,” Gonzales said. “All foods are in play, and how you moderate and monitor those are what really creates a healthy relationship with food.”
The American College Health Association reported in 2022 that around 5% of students in higher education met the criteria for a diagnosable eating disorder. According to Gonzalez, studies conducted by Dr. Stuart Murray — director of the Eating Disorders Program — and a team of researchers at Keck School of Medicine found that 15 to 20% of students face eating disorders in Los Angeles and Southern California, possibly because of psychological and social stressors.
“Your nutrition doesn’t have to look like your best friend’s or anyone else’s,” Barber said. “You find your own way with your food within basic parameters of eating balanced meals throughout the day and responding with more food when your body needs it.”
Throughout Arya’s experience as a student, he noticed that undergraduates gravitate toward cooking for themselves as they move away from campus and into their own housing. Arya also found that when he and his friends chose to cook for themselves at home instead of eating at a fast food restaurant, they made healthier choices.
“It’s almost like you enable each other [to build better habits] in a sense,” Arya said. “I think what I’ve noticed with some of my friends is if [they’re] all like ‘Let’s have a meal at home or just hang out,’ … typically we’re going to be more prone to do that more of the time. You as a group working together can influence everyone.”
