How can I eat better in a college dining hall?

saturnsmiles24
saturnsmiles24 Posts: 1 Member
in Food and Nutrition

I am a college student with limited options for food. I have a meal plan so I go to my school's dining hall for food, but the food is low quality leaving me with limited options to eat. We have few fruit and vegetable options, but often they are not the correct ripeness. Can I get some realistic advice for healthy eating in the dining hall?

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Answers

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 36,470 Member

    Reading between the lines of your post, I'm wondering if this is really in part a battle between enjoyment and nutrition. (I'm not dissing enjoyment as important when I say that.)

    If "healthy" is the big deal, unripe fruits are only slightly less nutritious than ripe ones, though the balance of starches vs. sugars differs, and some people may find that some kinds of very unripe fruits cause digestive distress, especially if eaten in larger amounts.

    I'm not sure what the issue is with unripe vegetables . . . or is it something else unpleasant rather than just the unripeness, when you're mentioning vegetables? Many vegetables, when less ripe are just smaller, not less nutritious. A few can be higher in toxins, but not all, and web search will give you information.

    If whole fruit is available, are you allowed to take it out of the dining hall? If so, some types will further ripen back in your room for a couple/few days.

    Keep in mind that cooked vegetables, even cooked from frozen or heated from cans, contain fiber and other nutrients. Yes, they're also possibly less pleasurable than fresh.

    About all a person can do when it comes to tastiness is use sauces or dressings to improve palatability.

    I'd say generically what you can do for healthfulness is eat the normal stuff: Leaner proteins when available, eggs, dairy foods unless you're intolerant, whole grains or the closest they have to it (oatmeal, breads with more whole grain, avoiding fried foods with lots of oil/fat on them, whatever veggies/fruits are ripe enough, and that sort of thing.

    If there are salad or sandwich bars, pick the best-looking options.

    There may be sacrifices on the enjoyment front. Without more information than you've given, it's hard to suggest what you should eat, other than the generalities above.

  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 9,490 Member
    edited April 28

    I’m honestly surprised that there’s no nutrition information anywhere.

    My husband worked for a huge multi national corporation with a giant food court, and they were providing this info twenty years ago. Fast food restaurants post it. Even my grocery store posts a bulletin listing nutrition facts for their bakery goods.

    when I go to a restaurant, I look at their online menu before hand and arrive with a plan

    You may have to ask for it or hunt it down. Or just go to the cafeteria’s staff dietician and ask for it.

    I honestly bet they’d be thrilled to have someone ask for the good choices. They’re there, and they’ve nurtured them in the hopes someone would take advantage!

    Be proactive. Go from line to line if you need to. Salad or beans here, chopped chicken there.

    It’s not like you’re being force fed. Take some responsibility.

    I’m not fussing at you, but you’re not a little bird with your mouth open waiting for mama to drop food in. You’re a university student which means you should be able to gather information and make rational and informed decisions.

    Just remember. YOU happen to weight loss. Weight loss isn’t going to randomly or magically happen to you. You’ve got to invest some thought and effort.

  • nossmf
    nossmf Posts: 14,025 Member

    @AnnPT77 and @springlering62 , I think it's something of a generational thing, as my own kids are much the same way. When I was a student I LOVED the dining hall options, always something new, wondrous variety from day to day, week to week. Military chow halls were even better, since as the saying goes, a military travels on its stomach, so better feed your troops well!

    Fast forward a couple decades, and my kids have all complained about the "quality" of their high school food, and both of my kids who joined the military have been very grumpy about the military chow hall offerings. I cannot imagine that the food everywhere has gone completely downhill so drastically (one place maybe, multiple places unlikely), so I have to conclude it's my kids and their expectations which are changed from how I perceived things when I was their age. Perhaps the OP is similar, since of similar age.

    Okay, rant over, let's address the OP's question about finding "healthy" options at the dining hall…

    • Generally, meats that are baked or grilled have lower calories than fried versions. Look for these options
    • Pasta gets a bad rep for being high-calorie, but I believe that has more to do with how much cheese gets added, either during baking or on top. Simple pasta with a tomato sauce is quite reasonable without the cheese added
    • Salad dressings are often very high-calorie. Use half what your normally would, or even better put some into a dipping cup on the side and dab your salad rather than drench
    • Sandwich bars are great high-protein, lower-calorie options, but they do often pack a ton of sodium when using processed meats like salami. Opt instead for roast beef, turkey or chicken. As with the salad suggestion, ask for half the cheese and half the mayo/oil to cut down on calories
    • Pizza/burgers are tasty, but try to limit to just once a week instead of daily
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 36,470 Member

    @nossmf, you have more insight than I into current-day young people, but:

    Colleges do vary . . . or did, in my day a zillion years ago. I assume they still do.

    While it wasn't among my criteria for choosing a higher ed institution, mine was pretty good back then, and got even better over the decades. (I worked for the university, so would end up eating in the dining halls now and then, though I haven't done so for a small number of years recently. I've actually considered buying a set of meal tickets as a retiree, to eat there occasionally: Easy, affordable, decent food, nearby to me.)

    In my high school/college era, I visited other schools for various reasons. Not all were as reasonable as the university I attended, to say the least.

    My high school, same era? Terrible. A common entree - yes, really - was "gravy". You'd get a giant heap of instant mashed potatoes with a generous ladle-ful of gravy. The gravy might be pork, beef (shreds), hamburger, chicken, turkey . . . but there was only a little actual meat in it, mostly just flour gravy and food coloring. As sides, add a tiny bit (half cup?) of limp lettuce with vinaigrette dressing (using the term generously) plus sometimes mini-marshmallows in it, and maybe a half cup of canned green beans or corn or something. So bad. The Parker-House-type dinner rolls were great, though. I think of them fondly.

    Institutional food is gonna vary.

  • springlering62
    springlering62 Posts: 9,490 Member
    edited April 28

    it occurs to me, I actually don’t have much experience of institutional food. My family was always so broke, I seldom ate lunch from the school cafeteria. I brown bagged it.

    I adored cherry preserve sandwiches. When money got too tight to afford preserves, mom made us pick endless blackberries, and made “blackberry jelly” (yeah, the air quotes are on purpose). My lunch was two slices of cheap white bread spread with that awful, runny blackberry jelly and a baggy with a handful of chips. By lunch time the sandwich was an unrecognizable purple pulp, and I’d toss it and live off the baggy of potato chips

    I know not whereof I speak, but your institutional gravy and mashed potatoes would have been very welcome in that era

  • DiscusTank5
    DiscusTank5 Posts: 660 Member

    I ate at my university's cafeteria for lunch today. The salad bar offerings were decent: spring mix as the base, to which I added chopped boiled eggs, edamame, bell pepper strips, shredded carrots, beet slices, and black olives with Caesar dressing. Also a side of cottage cheese. Could have added grilled chicken but it didn't look good today. I always skip the pasta salad and the like and go for plain ingredients. Also don't visit the dessert line and only drink water or unsweet tea, no soda.

    My students have complained about raw / undercooked chicken being served there before. With pictures!

    And ten years ago it was really hard for vegans to get enough to eat. The students complained and changed were made. We had amazing dining options a couple of years ago but then with budget cuts the quality went downhill.

    Eating well / healthy can be a challenge in a dining hall, especially if someone has food restrictions of any kind. My sympathies on your search for a decent meal, OP.

  • maryjay52
    maryjay52 Posts: 581 Member

    yogurt, eggs, salads ..even pasta if you can ask them to limit the sauce . oatmeal , lowfat milk . if you are able to get to an aldi or wegman store they often have fresh fruits for a decent price and a variety of healthy choices. my son is at a college and was lucky enough to get in a college apartment this year but even at the dorms they offer kitchen areas to cook up some stuff. he is fortunate that I send him groceries through maybe you can find a few students to kick in on groceries to make some dinners a couple times a week together or have a pot luck themed on healthy fresh food.

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