Interview #2

The second student I interviewed lived in the dorms and had some differences in her eating habits. When asked how she defined a well-balanced meal, she stated there should be a balance of good food choices of different varieties and categories and giving yourself enough to eat. She mentioned that portion control was also very important. To her people should be eating all healthy meals 4-5 days in a week and they should be able to have cheat days or a large meal when going out with others. Her personal eating habits include eating at least one healthy meal every day, but only two or three days out of the week does she eat al healthy meals. She notes that by living in the dorms and having a wide variety available to her makes it easier to choose healthy foods. She believes that it is important to prepare and eat meals that are healthy because it helps with your lifestyle choices and that these are positive habits that a person should have. This fits with Brown’s notion that “habits established at this time can affect both their current health and their risk for developing chronic diseases in the future” (Brown 2013). It is important for students to start thinking about eating healthy and learning to make healthy choices in order to help them make similar choices later in life and have healthy eating habits.

This student noted that living in the dorms greatly helped to eat healthier meals as they had more access to healthier and better quality food. She saw the greatest challenges, in general, to eating health as time for preparation, price with better quality and healthier choices often being more expensive and preferences such as not feeling like eating healthy. The first two are mainly challenges for people who don’t live in dorms since foods are bought and prepared for them. All students would have trouble making sure they choose to eat healthy instead of eating whatever they want to eat. The majority of the dining halls are set up buffet style so students get to choose what and how much food they want. Students can choose to make healthy choices without anyone telling them what they should get.

Another similarity this student shared with others was that school and activities could make it so less time is given to meals. This student has both student teaching and class in one day with classes in the evening, during dinner time. She says that sometimes she does not pack dinner and will either skip dinner or eat later. She says on average she skips meals at least three times a week. Even though this student chooses to try and eat healthy and maintain a healthy lifestyle, there are still times where she skips meals because she sees other things as being more important, or may have to compromise how healthy a meal is due to the time she has to prepare and eat food. Making a nutritional meal is still not the most important aspect in this student’s life and other things can become a priority.

This student also feels she is pretty knowledgeable about what is healthy and part of a well-balanced meal. She says she can read nutrition labels well and knows what foods give you what nutrients and understand calorie intake, but she doesn’t necessarily follow the standards. She says this is due to reasons listed above, by putting other things as a priority and by just eating what she wants sometimes instead of the healthy choices. Once again it seems education is not the greatest obstacle to eating healthy but rather the challenge is remembering to eat healthy and to take the time to eat well. There are also advantages for living in a dorm versus a house as there is little need to take time to prepare food which allows for more time to make healthy decisions.

Sources:

Brown, L., Larsen, K. J., Nyland, N. K., & Eggett, D. L. (2013). Eating Competence of College Students in an Introductory Nutrition Course. Journal Of Nutrition Education & Behavior, 45(3), 269-273.