College students are not eating enough fruits and vegetables, according to a 2011 study from the University of Oregon.
I know I personally am guilty of this – sometimes the fruits or vegetables are too expensive, and sometimes I just don’t use them on time and they end up going bad.
Dzeneta Delic, a second year industrial engineering major, only manages to get vegetables or fruits in her diet if they are frozen or pre-cooked.
“I know that’s supposed to take away from their nutritional value, but actually cooking vegetables and eating fresh fruit in time can be so hard,” Delic said.
The University of Oregon study, now online in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, compared male and female students’ dietary intake to see what the difference was. However, it found that both were not getting the right amount of fruits or vegetables. Male students had about five servings total a week, slightly higher than female students who self-reported eating about four servings of both fruits and vegetables. This is much lower than the recommended five daily servings – two of vegetables, three of fruit.
However, this isn’t the case for all students. Alyssa Harben, second year business major, is a pescatarian – that means the only meat she eats is fish. Since her options are already limited, she says she has to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables to feel full throughout the day.
“Being a pescatarian definitely helps me get all the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables. It’s basically all I eat,” Harben said.
But fruits and vegetables can be expensive. And, if bought in bulk, they are really hard to use before they go bad. It’s really important to know what fruits and vegetables are in season, because those will be significantly cheaper than the fruits and vegetables that need to be imported.
It is also important to know recipes that use a lot of vegetables or fruit, so you can make a huge batch and then freeze it. A great example of this is your basic vegetable soup. It is chock full of healthy veggies, is relatively inexpensive, and will freeze well!
That concludes my entry for this time – look forward to my next entry, where I will cook one of my favorite, cheap recipes from College Cooking: Feed Yourself and Your Friends by Megan and Jill Carle.
Until next time, Happy Cooking!
– Casey♥
Cooking in College 