Healthy Eating on Campus: A College Approach to Healthy Eating

Are you or your child in the process of selecting a college or university to attend? Are you looking for that perfect intersection of a degree program, location, and cost? Have you considered campus food plans? Yes, you heard me correctly. Thinking about healthy eating on campus has become increasingly more important when choosing a college to attend. There are several aspects to consider when looking at a college’s approach to healthy eating. A good school should have considered the many factors behind how food is grown, harvested, processed, transported, and finally prepared. That information should be readily available to you. Let’s look at three of those factors: environmental sustainability, animal welfare, and animal-to-human relationships.

 

Environmental Sustainability

Simply defined, environmental sustainability means growing enough food to feed the world’s population without causing excess harm to the planet. It means food that is safe, healthy, and free of extra toxins, pesticides, or additives. I like the way one website puts it: “A sustainable model in the food system promotes the physical health of the public, the economic health of farmers and producers, and the fair treatment of the earth, animals, and people.” (https://ecowarriorprincess.net/2018/02/10-ways-make-food-system-sustainable) 

Most people agree all that is a good thing, but have we looked to see if the college has considered those guidelines as well? The answer is, maybe. It becomes the responsibility of the people attending that school to do their due diligence and research on how much thought goes into food offerings. It’s not the size or prestige of the university that determines their food system choices. Their stated values and mission statements, however, should include information on how those choices promote and nurture healthy living.

Today’s college students are more aware of healthy food choices than perhaps their parents or grandparents were back in the day. One study found that students are more likely to make healthy selections when the food is actually placed in front of them prior to selection. Colleges that simply display a menu board only listing food available for that meal report students making consistently less healthy food choices than schools where the actual food is presented or, better yet, being prepared in front of them.

American culture today is more aware than ever of the need to follow individualized eating choices, given the array of preferences and actual medical needs when selecting specific foods. Some students want or need, a plant-based diet that contains variations in beans, chickpeas, or tofu, while others prefer a mix of plant and animal-based diets. Whether a student needs a regular, gluten-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, nut-free, or other specialized diets, we need to ask if that college meets those nutritional needs with what are considered “ethical” processes. Ethical processing refers to how the food is grown (plant-based) or raised and butchered (animal-based).

Animal Welfare

Selecting ethically processed plant foods means looking for crops grown with no, or with reduced, pesticides. These foods ship quickly to consumer markets and are often identified with some sort of organic label. Animal-sourced foods, however, are much trickier to trace regarding how the animals are bred, raised, butchered, and shipped to consumers. 

A quick look at a food label can sometimes provide assurance that the animals are treated with their best welfare in mind and by using environmentally sustainable methods. For example, a label on meat from a heritage company (one that only raises pre-industrial farm animals) contains a number that consumers can use to track down where the food originated and how it was processed. Farmers and ranchers in those plans adhere to animal welfare guidelines established by the “Certified Humane” program, or the “Animal Welfare Approved” program. Raising animals humanely means they must be raised outdoors in pastures with appropriate grass conditions of animal-to-land ratios and must not receive antibiotics or growth hormones. 

Some ranchers even consider the emotional well-being of their animals, knowing that stress can negatively impact the quality of the final product. Medical science has well documented the effect stress has on human quality of life and health. Now, researchers are considering ways to optimize the health and welfare of animals that result in improved meat quality. Contributions of Temple Grandin, a Ph.D. animal science professor and influential advocate for people with autism, bolstered a growing field known as Compassionate Care for Animals. She developed specially designed equipment that reduces stress in animals during their handling, corralling, and transporting phases. The National Agricultural Library, a division of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, has many such examples (https://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/food-industry-animal-welfare-policies ).

All of this is great information, you may say, but you have enough to do with researching degree programs, costs, and admission requirements without tracking down how food is raised, processed, and transported. That’s exactly my point! You shouldn’t have to do all this research (unless it’s interesting to you, then by all means have at it!) but the college you choose should conduct ongoing research into food sources and preparation on your behalf. This kind of background knowledge can equip you to ask better, more informed questions when you narrow down your college choices. It’s fair to ask, if they don’t care enough about students to do this kind of research about quality meal choices, what other areas might they be neglecting?

Animal to Human Relationships

Meat, milk, and eggs provide most of the protein we need in our diets as animal-sourced products. What cannot be forgotten, however, is that healthy animals produce healthy waste material. We often use their manure as a fertilizer for crops grown in the field and as such, it enters our human ecosystem even through solely plant-based diets. For us to be healthy, we need to eat healthy meats, fruits, vegetables, and grains. All those items are reciprocal somehow since each is an element of our food security and sustainability systems. To read more about that relationship, check out https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020/10/14-livestock-and-food-security-a-contested-relationship .

Growing and raising food to eat, whether plant or animal based, is critical to human life everywhere. The healthier our food, the healthier we are. It is a symbiotic relationship, one that we need to watch and protect. To recall the example above about reducing stress for meat-producing animals, I’m glad to hear that animals with less stress produce a higher quality meat. I don’t envision cows wearing sunhats, sunglasses, listening to classical music through their stereo headphones while soaking in bovine aromatherapy, but I’m glad to know scientists are looking for ways to improve my food sources. It is a recognition that the social and environmental impacts of growing and raising food for people are important for our planet’s—and our—continued food security needs.

Time to Make the College Connection

You’ve armed yourself with the requisite background information and now know there’s a lot more to cooking for college kids than throwing burgers and pizzas at them. Maybe you or your child is on a low-carb diet or a low-sugar diet. Maybe you’ve cut back on gluten or gone all the way to a gluten-free diet. Maybe you’ve chosen a vegan or vegetarian diet or have serious food allergies. Does the college or university you’re considering accommodate all those healthy diet food choices? How can you find out if they do?

By all means, include food questions in your interactions with various schools. Another alternative to consider, however, is looking over a college’s website. Go to the pages not frequented as often as admission requirements and scholarship opportunities. You could also visit websites that specifically filter questions on what different colleges and universities offer before you make your final choice. For example, at https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/best-colleges-for-food-and-nutrition, you’ll find an article titled, “2021 Top Colleges for Food Science and Nutrition in America.” The article has information about anyone interested in a food science course of study, but also contains information related to healthy eating on campus. The website itself also has a drop-down menu filtering many categories that might interest you, such as Greek life or political leanings, and includes rankings based on ethical considerations about sourcing and preparing food for students. 

If I may add a personal example: ethical viability and environmental sustainability are two areas of importance to one of my grandsons. He narrowed down his college choices to those that included his interests in healthy living. Although he considered many other features, an important deciding factor was the ranking for what became his final school choice—his college was ranked number one in ethical food preparation. He is beginning his junior year there this fall and has been happy in all the usual aspects of college life, such as scholarship awards and study abroad opportunities. He also has confidence that he is eating healthy food prepared in ethically sustainable methods. Was food preparation his only concern? Of course not. But it added to his overall contentment and healthy lifestyle that enables him to pursue academics and future career choices based on his personal values. Perhaps it’s something you’ll want to consider as well.

Author Bio:

Dr. Sherri Wynn is the founder and president of the nonprofit, International Christian Education Foundation. She is a Professor Emeritus at Indiana Wesleyan University, where she spent twenty years in the graduate education department teaching students pursuing a master’s degree or additional K-12 teaching licenses, including health sciences and physical education. Her educational books can be found at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=sherri+wynn&ref=nb_sb_noss and her latest publication has two guest chapters in Not Just an Elder’s Wife through e2Ministries Inc., at Not Just an Elder’s Wife (e2elders.org). She is speaking at their summer conference in July.

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