The secret to college healthy eating

Knowing what to do with leaves, roots & fruit is a crucial life skill

Healthy eating is mostly about habits. It’s the recurring actions that are repeated mindlessly day in and day out, month after month, year after year, that matter the most. What you eat on vacation or at a wedding party isn’t going to change things that much, but overeating just a bit each day makes for significant weight gain over the years, and poor diets take a toll on health if sustained.

So habits really matter – establish a healthy routine and you’re on autopilot towards a healthy destination. There are critical times in life in which habits are formed, and for young adults the transition from home to independent living is such a period.

Unfortunately, for many college students who are at that exact juncture, fast food courts, alcoholic drinks, junky snacks and midnight deliveries are the default. The lure of convenience, low price, student food culture and maybe also no parental food oversight (at last!) make unhealthy eating real easy for college students. Lifestyle habits shaped over these formative years may last a lifetime and can be hard to root out.

College students are reportedly on the lowest end of fruit and vegetable consumption in a world in which most people don’t get their 5-a-day. A recent review of 71 scientific papers from around the world found that on average only 40 percent of students ate vegetables daily and that being female was the most reliable predictor of higher vegetable intake, as was living at parents’ home and higher socioeconomic level.

Gender and economic background aren’t changeable and need to be controlled for when understanding the barriers towards better nutrition at this important life phase. But there’s another really important parameter that influences what people eat: the ability to cook.

When it comes to whole plant-based foods and especially vegetables, knowing what to do with these leaves and roots, and having the equipment, time and wherewithal to do it is what it all hinges on.

A new study in the journal Appetite looked at the veggie consumption and cooking skills of university students in Brazil. Less than half the students ate vegetables regularly. Knowing how to cook was significantly associated with eating veggies daily. These results are in agreement with another recent study in more than 1000 freshmen in the US that found that confidence in the ability to cook from basic ingredients and to follow a recipe was associated with eating more fruits and vegetables. “Cooking more frequently, cooking with greater skills, and practicing meal planning behaviors are associated with greater fruit and vegetable intake and lower BMI in first-year college students. Interventions aimed at improving health in college students may be enhanced by incorporating cooking and meal planning components,” the authors conclude.

And it make sense: Although eating a baby carrot from a bag requires no skill at all, making kale delicious requires equipment, skill and other pantry staples, such as oil, vinegar and seasoning.

Life skills

Kids are never too young, nor too old, to start cooking. Learning how to cook is a valuable life skill that will enable kids to eat healthier — no matter what you make at home it will usually be healthier than what you buy — and it can also be a great tool in helping them eat their veggies. 

Whether this summer is the last one before your kid leaves the nest or not, it’s never too late to dig into veggie and fruit prep skills. And I do know that it’s not just kids that don’t cook: Many of them are second and third generation non-cooks, but again, it’s never too late.  

This is the summer to fall in love with salads: It really takes very little skill to make a delicious green salad from scratch, and a green salad is a basic recipe that can include any number and variety of grains, seeds, fruits and nuts – the things that we should be eating more of daily.

Practice salads.

Another basic technique that will add lots of veggies to the diet is stir frying. It’s fast, you only need a few tools, and you can include many vegetables and protein sources.

The third one isn’t a summer dish (at least not in my home) but it’s another basic technique that any budding vegetable cook needs in their arsenal: vegetable soup. A big pot of vegetable soup can sustain a hungry student for many days, supplying lots of vegetables, as well as whole grains and pulses.

Cooking isn’t hard, it isn’t necessarily time consuming, it’s fun, and it’s something everyone should be able to do.  You wouldn’t imagine releasing kids into the world not knowing basic money management, or what to do with dirty laundry.

It should be the same for food skills.

Dr. Ayala