Welcome to college! College is the time where every teenager feels like a grown-up and lives up to the legend of “living off of ramen noodles.” But sometimes, the fast food joint down the street fits within your time frame. Let’s face the truth, ramen noodles aren’t the healthiest food to eat, and neither is the fast food restaurant. Being college students, we all know it's stressful to find time to stock our fridge with healthy food choices. How can we possibly eat healthy in college?
To start things off, stock your fridge with healthy foods. Our biggest struggle as a college student is finding the time to go to the store. When we do go to the store, our cart is typically packed with TV dinners, ramen noodles and junk food. The best way to avoid our troubled aisle of junk food is to make a list of the healthy foods we prefer to eat and go directly to those aisles.
We finally have our fridge stocked with the healthy foods we love, but we don’t always want to eat in or spend a lot of money each week to keep our fridge stocked. That’s where our on campus dining hall comes into place. We all secretly love our campus dining hall because we save money, and it’s a convenience to those living on campus, but the dining hall doesn't always have the healthiest options, either. How can we enjoy our dining hall while choosing to eat healthy? Choosing a healthy food can be difficult with all the lovely french fries and cheeseburgers lined up and calling our name, but there is a way to achieve good and beneficial foods. Just like in stocking your fridge, know exactly what you want to eat. Knowing what you want to eat before going into the dining hall will limit your temptations to choose those fattening, oil-saturated, salty foods.
Wanting to stay in for the night, we typically have two options of cooking: stove top or microwave. When it comes to finding a stove to cook on, a majority of students are out of luck and resort to eating at a fast food restaurant. STOP! Finding a stove top to cook on can be difficult, but there is at least one residence hall that has a community kitchen. When it comes to cooking, we must connect with our inner executive chef…or look on Pinterest. Check out http://www.food.com/topic/stove-top/popular for more healthy cooking ideas and recipes!
Microwaves here, microwaves there, microwaves EVERYWHERE! Yes, it is possible to cook in a microwave and act like a gourmet chef. Becoming a microwave ninja is very simple, you can either put in 30 seconds a lot of times until your food is fully cooked, or check out http://collegelife.about.com/od/fooddining/a/25ThingsYouCanCookinYourDormMicrowave.htm for some delicious food options that will leave you full and feeling like Chef Ramsey!
Eating in college can be a struggle, but it is possible! Follow these ways to eating healthy in college, and you are guaranteed to not feel bloated from McDonald’s, Dairy Queen or Taco Bell!
