Survey Results

A survey was given to the students at the University of Illinois in order to see how students think about nutrition and how they are eating. It was completed over two weeks with 29 people responding to the survey. They were all undergraduate students with a wide variety of majors. The first 5 questions asked about the student’s specific eating habits, including how much time they allocate to meals, how often they eat breakfast, how many meals they eat a day, how often they snack and how often they eat out. The second set of questions included what they thought a well-balanced meal was and what their education was like concerning nutrition and what motivates their food decisions. The third section consisted of demographic questions.

            All of the students that took the survey were undergraduates at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Seven were male and twenty two were female. Twenty eight people identified as white, one person as Asian and two as Asian and white. All but one person identified their country of origin as the United States and were all at least second generation. This means the majority of the participants grew up in American culture and has had American influences on the importance of food and nutrition. The other person was from first generation from Poland. There was a mixture of ethnicities that were identified with including Mexican, Italian, German, Lithuanian, Korean, Japanese-American, Polish, Swedish and Austrian. It is possible that this heritage could have some influence on what people ate and how they thought about food. The majority of the students lived in University Housing, Private Housing or Greek Houses, which usually provides meals for students.

            Students eating habits were different and had some variety in their answers. 15 students (52%) said they only ate 2 meals a day, 13 students (45%) said they ate 3 meals and one student (3%) said they ate 4 or more meals a day. Breakfast was only eaten everyday by 9 students, a few times a week by 8 students, a few times a month by 8 students and never by four students. This shows how students may not make it a priority in order to eat three meals a day and to eat breakfast, which is an important meal to have. Some possibly explanations for this is that students’ schedules allow for them to wake up later so they may not eat breakfast and/or skip a meal, they may only wake up to get ready to go to class and not set aside time for breakfast or they just do not feel like breakfast or eating three meals are a priority.  Students also say they snack (27 saying they do so 4 times or less daily) which they may consider makes up for the missed meal and satisfies how hungry they are. Another insight into how students may view the importance of meals is how long they typically take to prepare and eat one meal. 16 students (55%) said they took 15 minutes or less, 8 (28%) took 16-30 minutes and only 5 students (17%) took 31-60 minutes. The majority of students took only a little time to eat a meal. This could indicate that meals are not as important to prepare or to take the time to eat and socialize (which is a component of eating competence mentioned in the first blog post). It seems some college students don’t always value the meal they eat and the possibility of socializing with others.

            When looking at how often students talk about nutrition in high school courses most chose not often (24 students) or never (1 student) and this trend is the same in college level courses (15 said not often while 11 students said never). Students do not receive much formal education on what constitutes a healthy eating lifestyle. It is possible to get this information from elsewhere such as newspapers, movies, books or television programs, but students would have to actively seek it out. Answers on what the student defines as a well-balanced meal all varied but many had several different food groups and agreed their needed to be a variety of food. Some listed the food pyramid, or the my plate as what was appropriate for a well-balanced meal. This shows that people have learned or remember what a healthy meal is at different times/locations since the food pyramid is being replaced by the my plate. Students often described it as having grains, fruits and vegetables, protein, necessary nutrients and that these are all in the right proportions, such as more vegetables/fruit than protein. It seems that students generally had a good idea of what is important to have a well-balanced meal, even though they had little education on it. There were a few that chose not to answer the question, wrote very little, or wrote that there needed to be an entrée and dessert, not giving many specifics. Students also wrote what motivated their food decisions with 23 students stating things they love, 19 students saying they wanted to eat healthy and 13 students saying they wanted to control their body weight (students could choose as many as applied to them). It seems that students do think about eating healthy but also chose what they love, which can be healthy. Some students did note that they ate what was being served in the dining halls and whatever was fast and easy to make. This could affect the nutritional value of what students are eating and if they are eating well-balanced meals.

After the survey I decided to interview a couple of people in order to know more about their eating decisions.