Eating healthy while in university is an issue that many students struggle with in our society. With busy class schedules, trying to get enough sleep, staying active, and juggling a social life, is there really enough time to cook healthy meals throughout the week? Student’s nutritional health is extremely important and directly relates to their mental health and how well they do in school. Having a balanced diet is very important and should be discussed more on university campus’. It is critical that students have healthy and affordable options to choose from on campus. There are ways students can maintain their nutritional health on their own, and we are going to discuss some of those strategies in this blog post.
One action that can be done to help students eat healthy is meal prep. There are many Instagram accounts and online sources that give recipes and examples of how you can meal prep. Meal prep can happen on a Sunday night, and if enough food is made it can last for the whole next week. It may feel time consuming in the moment, but once your food is made and packaged it will feel worth it. Also with meal prep it is important that you are choosing healthy options. One of my favourite “meal prep” Instagram accounts is, “how2mealprep”. This account is free to follow and they have so many great resources. They make meal prep look easy and exciting, if you are someone who is looking to get started with meal prep I would definitely recommend that you follow this account.
One fact that I think students (including myself) forget is that some drinks contain A LOT of calories and unnecessary ingredients. For example: a large double double coffee contains 218 calories, and medium iced cap contains 350 calories, and a 600ml bottle of cola contains 266 calories. Students drink these drinks to keep themselves energized and awake so they can study late into the night. At the time they are consuming these drinks, they are not considering what they’re drinking they just want anything that will keep them alert. Students need to be more aware when choosing what to drink, because drinks can contain a lot more calories than someone would expect.
I think that university’s need to give students better food options. In my experience I found the “healthy” food places had fewer options and tasted poorly. They were also slightly more expensive. Sometimes when there was something that was healthy and appealing to me, by the time I got to the front of the line it would have been sold out. The school should be able to provide enough healthy food that everyone has the option to purchase it! The food service wasn’t always so disappointing but I feel like situations like that should never happen.
To conclude I personally think that if university’s gave students more healthy options and made more signs/posters like the one I have attached above, the students would focus more time on eating healthy. I also think that students have to recognize how important nutrition is and they have to put in the effort to meal prep. If both of these challenges were fixed I believe that students would be healthier on campus.
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