We had a lot of options. Even just in the cafeteria we had a huge sandwich choice, pasta choices, stir fry, NICE salad bar, hamburgers, fries, and an area that changed their choices daily. We also had a lot more options in the union. The only problem was a lot of stuff was fried. And I always chose hamburgers and fries. Seriously every weekday for a whole year I had hamburgers and fries for lunch, it's amazing I still eat them :p

I can only speak for where I went to college, and I can say, yes, they were much healthier than they could have been. We had a pretty intense salad bar, lots of fruit (we were permitted to take one piece out) and different healthy eating options for vegans and vegetarians. You were only required to be on the meal plan for the first year, but most people stayed on it as long as they lived on-campus.

I looked, and this is what they're offering for dinner at one dining hall tonight:

Lemon Broiled Chicken
Pasta Spinach Casserole
Rosemary Potatoes
Rabe
Braised Cauliflower
Italian Bread
Black & White Pudding Cake

Stir Fry Station
Fried Rice Bowl with Ham
Fried Rice Bowl with Edamame
Vegetable Egg Rolls

Pasta Bar
penne
meatless sauce
napolitana sauce

Like I mentioned before, we always had a salad bar and fruit, as well as a baked potato bar, brown rice and white rice. I eat much healthier now, but this doesn't seem too bad! (Except fried rice with ham sounds weird.)

My brother is a master personal trainer and he repeatedly tells people that it's often the skinniest people that come to him that are the most unfit. They have no muscle. At least when a person is heavy, they tend to still have lots of muscle because the body has had to carry all of their weight around. You want to know who he says tend to have the worst muscle:fat ratio out of all the people he trains? Asian women. He calls it "skinny fat."

Wow, this would really piss me off if I was a student at that school. Talk about not putting your money where your mouth is!

The absurdity in that is that the real difference between healthy food and unhealthy food is how it is prepared. It's not a huge price difference to substitute apple sauce for oil in a cake, for example. It might be a little more pricey to use egg beaters instead of eggs. In my grocery store though, a bottle of dressing of one brand is the same price whether it's fat free or not. Same with sour cream. Are beans truly more expensive than meat? I don't think so. It's not any cheaper to serve fried chicken than broiled, or grilled or broiled burgers instead of fried. It takes a little water to rinse off your beef when you are making taco meat, reducing the fat tremendously. Since I've been making a point to eat healthier foods, I spend less money, truth be told.

Double posting here, but this thread has had me thinking, about my own weight issues, my thoughts in college, etc. I actually think a rule like this would have helped me a lot. As I noted earlier, when I started college I weighed 130 so my BMI was about 24, within the normal range. At that time, I thought I was the most hugely obese woman on campus. My perception was that I was the biggest girl in my chapter. I gained 40 pounds my freshman year, as also noted above and then went home, joined Weight Watchers for the summer and lost it again. The same thing happened sophomore year. I didn't go home again after that and didn't lose the weight I put on junior year or senior year, but I didn't gain any more than that either. I would have been 1-2 pounds away from that BMI requirement. Around the time I graduated, I thought to myself "I'm huge no matter what I do so I'm going to stop fighting my weight and just do what I want". That's when I really packed on the weight.

When I look at pictures of my chapter now, I think "Wow, was my body image messed up or what?" I was gorgeous. I had an amazing body. I had no idea. I have often wondered whether, had my body image been more accurate, I would have ever let it get out of control like I did in later years. My highest non-pregnancy weight ever was 270. It's shocking to me that I ever let it get that bad, but in my head, at 130, I thought I looked just as bad as I actually did look at 270. My weight has been all over the place since that highest weight ever. I got down to 219 at one point, doing Atkins. Then I gained some again. Then I got sick with Crohn's and got down to 159, but that was because I was literally starving to death from not absorbing anything I was eating. My blood pressure was dangerously low, my electrolytes were dangerously low, I was horrifically anemic and was very close to being hospitalized. Clearly, I wasn't enjoying that weight, despite being thrilled to BE at that weight again. I told my gastro that there was no way I was ever going to gain that weight back and he told me that I most definitely would and probably more. He said my body was used to starving and that my metabolism was wrecked and I would be conserving every calorie I could and would pack on the weight very quickly once I was absorbing calories again. At that point, I was losing 2.5 pounds a week no matter what I ate. And, of course, he was right. They removed the diseased part of the intestines and while in the hospital for 6 days on nothing but IVs, I gained 5 pounds. I told him I was very upset that I was gaining weight on IVs and he said I was getting more calories from those IVs than I had been getting from my food. I did gain weight rapidly after that. I yo-yo'd around after that, gaining, losing, then I quit smoking and put on 45 pounds very quickly. It was awful. Last Christmas, I decided to stop hitting the vending machines at work and I lost 12 pounds. I also decided that I wanted to try working out to deal with stress, thanks to DoctorD's inspiration. I would read her facebook status saying she was so stressed she couldn't wait to get to the gym to work it out. I thought.. it works for her, maybe it will work for me too. It felt good and it did reduce my stress. Then, on my birthday (March), I decided that the best birthday present I could give myself was to eat the way my body functions best, which is high protein, low carbs. I build bulk muscle very easily and felt GREAT the last time I tried eating that way. It also works well with the Crohn's, since I can't eat fiber. I knew that eating mostly protein made me energetic. I decided that, since I have a chronic illness that I have very little control over, I might as well control the things that I DO have control over. So, between March and July, I lost about 40 more pounds. I started playing around again, eating more carbs and have only lost a few pounds since then. However, I've maintained 56 pound weight loss now for a few months. I stopped working out when grad school started because managing my time became a real challenge with the kids back in school, working full time, having homework to get done so often. I think I'm in a groove with grad school now though. I'm done with this term and I decided this past weekend that it's time to hit the work outs again. I may not get as many in as I was during the spring and summer, but I need to do it more often than I am now. I'm also restricting the carbs again. I do best if I keep it to around 50 g of carbs a day. My goal now? 43 more pounds, maybe even 50 more. Hopefully by our Convention in late June. Our last convention, I was dangerously close to my highest weight ever. I could be about 100 pounds smaller this time around. I'll have to buy a new white dress for Initiation, but hey, that's ok.

My gastro has warned me that I should NOT go below 150 because, if I get a bad flare again, I could lose 30-40 pounds over the course of a couple months and that would be dangerous. He wants me to keep a cushion. I don't think that will be a problem though..lol. I've never lost more than 40 pounds in an attempt before and usually, when I stop, I gain it back faster. Having maintained this loss for this long gives me more confidence that I can keep going.

But, my original point was.. perhaps a program like that would have made me realize that I wasn't the hugely obese person that I thought I was, at 130 pounds. I can be up to 143 and still be in the "normal" range, per the BMI charts.

It totally depends on the campus. I travel to different campuses pretty regularly, and the difference between the cafeterias' options are huge.

Some schools have killer food plans/options, then there are some schools whose options are worse than my high school's (which is saying something considering how long its been since I was in high school).

Of all the schools I've visited lately (considering only those schools where I ate on campus), Virgina Tech's quality/variety is by far the best. Miami (Ohio) is probably next in line. I won't list the schools with the worst options, but it's pretty obvious which schools actually care about the food options available to their students.

Kinda off topic, but not totally... This is one reason why I always recommend that students eat on campus when they visit a school they're interested in. If their food sucks, and you're obligated to purchase a food plan, you're committing yourself to at least a year of unsatisfying dining.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that Lincoln is a historically black university, and correlated the requirement to the crazy levels of diabetes and kidney disease among african-americans

I think EVERYONE regardless of BMI should have to take a health class to graduate anywhere. Diabetes and kidney disease levels might be at dangerous levels in the black, hispanic, and native american population, but statistics among whites aren't all the great, either. A big part of the health class should focus on good eating habits. But maybe Coke and Pepsi have a clause in their contracts with all these schools that no one will mention how bad their products are for you, who knows?

Part of the same requirement for everyone should be a solid education on sexual health as well, considering the insane STD and unwanted preganancy levels among all young people, but that's another battle and another discussion. At Penn State after I left, I think the choice was health ed OR sex ed - why the choice? Why not incorporate both?

(I'm also all for a swimming requirement, too, thinking back on a non-swimming acquantance who drowned up at Penn State my senior year in a situation which would not have killed a swimmer, but again - that's another discussion)

Someone did. ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by MysticCat (Post 1871596) I heard an interview with someone from Lincoln (it may have been DeBoy) a week or two ago, and he made a big deal about part of the impetus for this requirement being the problem of obescity among African-Americans, which can lead to other health problems (heart issues, diabetes, etc.). He was laying it out as an HBCU's responsibility to the African-American community, but if that's the reasoning behind it, then it seems everybody should have to take the class, because it's not just about your own health and making good choices for yourself -- it's also about the health of those around you and how you can support healthy choices by others.

lol

Ah, that's what happens when you don't read every page of a 14-page thread.

But my main message still stands - nutrition, health, sex-ed and swimming for all! Anything to give our students the knowledge they need to stay safe, healthy and afloat.