Eating healthy and college living
The tips behind making them both work
Kenneth Long
Issue date: 11/5/09 Section: A&E
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Knowing is half the battle.
Assistant Director of Dining Services Dennis Wobbe said small choices like having a leaner meat or veggie burger can help prevent the freshmen-15 regardless of your class ranking.
"A hamburger just after a long workout isn't that bad," Wobbe said. "But if you eat nothing but burgers and french fries every day, it will add up."
Since Wobbe started at SIUE in 2008, he said he is trying to make students aware of some of the healthy choices available when they dine at SIUE. Before Wobbe started here, he said most of the "Healthy Choice" information for Dining Services was less than prominent. As part of the old system, an icon is placed next to certain menu options to indicate that an item is a "Healthy Choice."
The cafeteria used to feature a desktop computer with nutritional information about the food served. The computer, as of this semester, has disappeared. Wobbe said this was from lack of usage.
"The computer was a paperweight," Wobbe said.
Instead, a menu board adorns the wall where the "paperweight" used to sit. The board includes the menu items served that day and explains which items are high or low in fats, carbohydrates, calories and other nutrients. One piece of information absent from the menu board is sodium information. Wobbe said sodium information is important to calculating a healthy meal and is "something that needs to be changed."
Why the burger and fries?
Freshman kinesiology major Brandon Miller of Belleville said his eating habits have changed since he came to college.
"I'm down to [eating] about twice a day at most," Miller said. "I eat big meals, as opposed to eating many small meals."
Wobbe said eating larger than necessary meals is one of the biggest problems in college diets. Instead, eating several, smaller meals will cut down on how much food is stored as fats.
"Eat breakfast, even if it's something small," Wobbe said. "If you starve your body, once it gets food it will grab and store."
Instead of loading up on "fast carb" options like fried foods, Wobbe said the "Grab-n-Go" options are a better alternative because of their smaller portions and healthier contents, such as fresh fruit or hummus, a food consisting mainly of chickpeas blended with spices.
Wobbe said the Grab-n-Go locations are available at Center Court, Kaldi's and the Freshens located in the Student Fitness Center.
While Miller said he does eat the classic burger and fries offered in the cafeteria, he said staying healthy and eating right is still a priority, until the urge to feed kicks in.
"More often than not, [what I eat] is what sounds good," Miller said.
The splurge on the American classic is not an unforgivable sin for college diets. Wobbe said the burger and fries are still allowed, in moderation.
"You can have one bad meal a day," Wobbe said.
Since he exercises on a regular basis, Miller said carbohydrates do not carry the consequences for him as it would for an extreme dieter.
"If your diet calls for a lot of carbs like mine does, it works out well," Miller said. "If you eat [unhealthy foods] everyday, you're probably going to gain your fresh- men-15 pretty fast."
If you can't stand the heat...
While many upper-class students can cook for themselves, freshmen living in Woodland, Prairie and Bluff halls are limited to cooking with microwaves.
Director of Housing Mike Schultz said students are not allowed to have any kind of cooking device in their rooms, such as hot plates, microwaves or griddles. Microwaves, however, are provided in the lounges of each wing for student use.
Schultz said the ban on cooking devices is for fire safety and pest control.
The multi-function rooms of the freshmen residence halls do house one stove, but Schultz said they are for events held in the rooms that might require cooking.
"The stoves are for programs, not for individual student use," Schultz said.
While Miller said he would like to cook, he said he saw the danger posed when freshmen are allowed access to stoves.
"I personally would love it, but it would be a huge fire hazard," Miller said. "It's probably better that there isn't access."
Sophomore pre-med major Paige Wells of Morrisonville said she would have enjoyed stove access while she lived in Woodland Hall last year, especially on colder days.
"It was the first time that I lived away from home," Wells said. "Now I'm used to just going and grabbing food. I don't use my stove because I'm not used to it, and I eat out a lot."
Counting the unknown calories.
Behind the scenes of the cafeteria in the MUC is drastically different than the front; long, cream-colored hallways lead to rows of metallic shelves that house whirring contraptions. Some mix dough for bread to be baked that day; others are bubbling pots filled with sauces. Further down the hall are a few silver doors with large latches, all cold to the touch, built right into the seemingly plain hallway.
Wobbe pulled the handle, swinging the door open and revealing a small room congested with brown, cardboard boxes. As he sifted through the plain boxes, he revealed the small type on the plainly-packaged food: taco meat, shrimp, cuts of pork, grilled chicken strips. After a few minutes of seemingly sub-zero searching in the meat freezer, he pulled out another brown box. This contained pink ovals with a waffle-square texture: the source of the aptly-named "MUC burger."
What the box did not contain, however, was any description of the nutritional content Wobbe said this absence of information is frustrating when it comes to measuring calories.
"It's hard to say caloric content when the food isn't even labeled," Wobbe said.
During Wobbe's quest to chronicle the calories of the cafeteria's food, he said he has run into many problems getting the straight facts from his suppliers.
How food is cooked is another alteration to a food's nutrients. For example, according to Chick-Fil-A's Web site, a Chargrill Chicken Sandwich that weighs 8.03 oz and is grilled has 300 calories with 30 calories from fat. A regular Chicken Sandwich, which weighs 6.3 oz and is fried in peanut oil, has 430 calories and 150 calories from fat.
While Chick-Fil-A can calculate this easily, trying to calculate the difference between a hamburger, turkey burger and veggie burger is a harder task when the company that makes the base pattie does not give its nutritional value.
"Extra oil or butter makes it hard to calculate caloric content," Wobbe said.
The problem is choice.
Miller said he limits himself to fast food once or twice a week. For restaurants, he said his favorite place is Qdoba.
"I try to avoid fast food simply because it's bad for you," Miller said.
When it comes to the cafeteria, Miller said many of the available options are not healthy, and it is not always clear which of the options are healthy.
"College life discourages healthy eating in the ratio of unhealthy food to healthy food," Miller said.
Since SIUE uses a system where students pay per item they eat, Wobbe said the system promotes smaller portions, whether or not they are healthy.
Some schools, like Wobbe's previous school of employment, Saint Louis University, have a dining system where students are allowed to eat as much as they want for a set price per meal. Wobbe said this leads to his biggest concern for college eating habits: overeating.
"I've seen students skip right past the fruits and healthy foods and go straight for the pizza," Wobbe said. "They gorge, sit there and eat three plates of food."
Some students, who may come from families with bad eating habits to begin with, may not know good eating habits. Wobbe said he now works with Housing to promote healthy eating by distributing information in the residence halls. Dining Services has also partnered with the Student Fitness Center to incorporate exercise with the healthy diet with the introduction of a Freshens in the Student Fitness Center
"You have to promote more variety," Wobbe said.
Dining Services also gets nutrition interns every year to help develop new recipes for the cafeteria.
While the cafeteria does sell foods laden with fats, sugars, carbohydrates or all of the above, Wobbe said it is important to offer the choice.
"You can get something fried or baked," Wobbe said.
Can you eat healthy and go to college?
Next to the pictures of tacos and gorditas overloaded with cheese and sour cream at the Taco Bell Express, strips of green plastic list the "Fresco," or more healthy, choices: Fresco chicken tacos, Fresco bean burritos, Fresco Burritos Supreme. However, according to the Taco Bell nutrition calculator on its official Web site, the Fresco Bean Burrito drops from 350 to 330 calories. The regular taco and Fresco taco share a similar reduction, from 170 to 150 calories.
Wobbe said his biggest tips for eating healthy in college are: "Never eat hungry, pack ahead, keep your blood sugar regular, have many small meals as opposed to large meals and don't drink soda."
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