Hilal Nakiboglu: Teaching nutrition to college kids

Whether you spent your spring break playing at the beach or watching others do so on MTV, chances are you've had your week's fill of naked abs and pink bikinis. Perhaps, like me, you've recently ventured into a retail dressing room, anticipating the soon-to-arrive warm weather. With elbows knocking against confining walls, you may have tugged on some version of a spandex swimsuit and conducted that all-critical examination. The examination that helped you discover where all those late night devourings of Cocoa Puffs have ended up. The examination that told you your jeans might not be as highly prone to dryer-shrinkage as you had previously suspected. Yes, you decide, you must shape up. No more shrugging off the gym in favor of trips to La Petite Creperie. Gone should be the days where cold kung pao chicken and a limp, leftover slice of cheese pizza served as a balanced breakfast. You promise, behind that dressing room curtain that somehow never manages to fully cover the doorway, to enter Pottruck's disciplined line of sweaty treadmillers who eat steamed tofu for a good time. When Access Hollywood tells you a dedicated diet of boiled bok choy does wonders for Gwenie Paltrow's figure, you take a silent, inspired oath to follow in her light footsteps. Yet, standing in the dining hall, just hours later with tray in hand, you decide that boiled anything is for the dogs and make a strategic beeline for the cheesecake display instead. Enter the reality of life as a common collegian. According to a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, college dieticians across the nation are mindful of an unfortunate trend. Increasingly, students who are considered unhealthy eaters fall into one of two groups -- the overeaters who have an irresistible penchant for fast junk food and those who diet obsessively -- are often at risk of developing an eating disorder. While the two types of eaters might seem very different at first glance, they actually share a common problem: the inability to eat with moderation in mind. Consuming in moderation has to be relearned by most upon setting foot in a college eatery. Armed with an ice cream scooper and unlimited access to 12 tubs of frozen goodness, quieting the insistent five-year-old inside can often present a real challenge. The issue here isn't that students don't know how to eat healthy or can't tell when they're full or hungry. Rather, eating what we want, when we want is liberating. It becomes a way for us to break away from our parents in exercising our rights of choice and taste. Further, digging into that second slice of German chocolate cake gives one the satisfaction of getting maximum bang for one's dining buck. Nevermind that eating is good fun. It supplies a nice backdrop when socializing with friends. That's why a recent movement in campus dining halls nationwide seems misguided and a bit off the mark. From Concordia College to Cornell University, colleges have decided that to combat the trend of imbalanced eating they must simply educate us. If only we knew better, the argument goes, we'd be practicing healthier eating behaviors that express moderation. As such, some institutions, such as the University of California at Los Angeles have begun providing detailed information about the nutrient and caloric content of campus food offerings. Students can access and compare menus through a comprehensive online system. Others, like the University of Southern California, have set up information kiosks on-site in cafeterias toward the same end. While certainly of some use, can simply reading that a serving of Korean BBQ beef contains 3,228 milligrams of sodium critically change one's outlook on food? Nancy Ellson, a nutritionist at William Paterson University explains, "It's easy to give the students nutritional information, but it's hard to impart to them the understanding that food is [something] they have to make peace with.... Unlike other things they may develop addictions to, food is the one thing they can't give up for the rest of their lives." Information is but part of the answer here. Generally, undereaters and overeaters have some basic level of awareness that the food choices they're making are often poor ones. Providing more information isn't going to change the behavior of the majority. In fact, supplying too much detail about fat and caloric contents might actually be exacerbating some students' obsession with food. Instead, perhaps campus officials would be well advised to take a more holistic approach to student dining. Providing ample, aggressive and accessible professional support is essential. Allowing for more flexibility in meal plan selection may also help. Having a pay-as-you-go option will certainly benefit those low on resolve with soft spots for soft serve. Hilal Nakiboglu is a second-year doctoral student in Higher Education Management from Ankara, Turkey.

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