Posts tagged with eating.
Does University make you fat?
High stress, less sleep, and a cafeteria food diet. For some students, the first year of university is a recipe for weight gain.
My two oldest, who both just completed their first year at the University of Waterloo, lived at home last year. Predictably, their eating habits didn't change much, if at all. Okay, they both seemed to increase their coffee consumption quite a bit. But mostly, I didn't give much thought or concern to what they were eating. Or not eating.
But for those students living away from home for the first time, the demands of university go far beyond academics. Adjusting their study habits from high school are just one of many changes, such as suddenly being responsible for meals. Of course, many parents support their children throughout university, financially and otherwise.
But even just playing at being an adult is demanding.
A study from the October 2007 issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence revealed that moving away from home makes female first-year students three times as likely to binge eat.
The researchers found that first-year female students who lived away from home were more likely to report symptoms of binge eating than students still living with their parents.
Erin Barker, the lead researcher of the study, says that when a young person moves away from home, not only are their social networks disrupted, their eating patterns also change if they live in residence.
And those changes in their eating patterns are not for the better.
Barker says those unhealthy eating habits could eventually lead to obesity and even diabetes.
In other words, never mind the 'Freshman 15.' Sending your child into residence might be setting them up for life-long health problems.
Obesity and diabetes are both serious health concerns.
Many first year students live at home, or have already been responsible for their own meals for years, anyway. But other students aren't so lucky. A crash course in nutrition and preparing meals is one of their lessons of first year.
Really, it's a wonder that the 'Freshman 15' isn't the 'Freshman 25.'
Yet according to two University of Guelph dieticians, the Freshman 15 is dropping a few pounds. Those 15 pounds that first-years supposedly pack on? Binge-eating or not, it's actually more like five. Between leaving high school and finishing their first year of university, the first-year female students who were studied gained five pounds, which is two-thirds less than the fabled 15.
So is five pounds still cause for concern? Perhaps not. But the fact that the students in the study increased their waist circumference, body mass index, and body fat is definite cause for concern.
University might not make you fat. But a poor diet and too much stress add up to a toxic mix for too many first-years.
The Freshman 15 might be an exaggeration. But it's not a myth.
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KATHY DOBSON 
