Coming from a second year college student, I can confirm that my eating habits at home and my eating habits at school are very different. At home, I tend to eat more on schedule, nice home cooked meals, and fresher ingredients. Going back to school means sporadic eating times, cheap and easy frozen meals, and a suffering bank account from all the delivery I get.
Here are the most common bad eating habits I notice when at college:
1. Skipping breakfast because you don’t have time or food in your kitchen.
Whether it’s because you’re running late for class or you simply only have bread and a slice of cheese, breakfast is commonly overlooked. If only we took more into consideration the energy breakfast provides for us to get our day going strong.
2. Ordering Pizza at 3 AM after a night out.
Nothing like ending a fun night out by ordering some late night pizza delivery with your friends. The amount of time my friends and I have come back from a night out to one of our places and ordered an obscene amount of food to eat is absurd, and clearly not healthy.
3. Eating at the local 24/7 heart attack special food joint.
We all know that one restaurant that’s open 24/7 that serve wraps with tater tots, meat, cheese, fries and anything that will get you close to a heart attack. You stumble into it at 2 am ordering some type of cheap sandwich with everything fried in it with a side of fried mac n’ cheese bites, that you will for sure regret eating the next morning.
4. Ramen and Easy Mac being a staple piece in your diet.
Never have I seen more empty cartridges of Ramen and Easy Mac than I do in college. It is cheap and easy to make so the appeal for eating these two options are high.
5. Redbull replaces water, especially during midterm and finals week.
I try to stay away from Redbull, but during an all-nighter it’s sometimes the only thing that can help you through the night. Redbull is by no means good for you to drink, but it’s cheaper than a coffee at Starbucks and gets the job done of keeping you awake.
6. Long study sessions at the library means heavy snacking.
If I plan on being at the library for a long period of time I go to the store located there and go for a nice bags of chips to munch on while studying. When going there with friends and you all get hungry, an order for delivery is pretty common and a staple go to is PIZZA.
7. Ordering Insomnia Cookies at midnight because you’re stressed… but you’re always stressed.
My roommate and I will always make excuses to order insomnia cookies because let’s face it, they are amazing. Nothing like eating a Double Chocolate Chunk when you’re stressed out all the time.
8. Frozen Foods > Homemade Meals.
Benefits of frozen foods are that they are cheap, easy to make, and an easy clean up. Homemade meals tend to require more time to make, increase the number of dishes that have to be cleaned, and could be more expensive depending on how savvy you are in the grocery store.
As much as I vouch to make my eating habits better in college, I always tend to fall back on one of these habits sooner or later. Although we all will try and improve our eating habits, they are not easy to break… especially when everyone around you is eating the same way.
Featured image via Maksim Goncharenok on Pexels
