College kids' eating habits won't win top grades

Students may look like their parents; sometimes they may behave like their parents but seldom do they dine like them.

In an informal survey of University of Washington students who live off-campus and cook for themselves, we found few who actually cook.

They rely on food that is user-friendly that takes less than three minutes to prepare. Nutrition is an unfamiliar concept. Even their customs are unique. They eat late and rarely do they share the same meal.

Our random survey proved the age-old parental fear, without time, money or motivation, many college students' diets are reduced to seven-night-a-week sandwiches with a lot of food groups going untouched. The only vegetable that some students consume is limited to a dollop of ketchup squirted on their four Big Macs.

With no parents around to monitor meals, students such as John Erickson, scavenge for whatever is "easy, convenient and cheap."

Erickson, who was downing Costco frozen pot stickers for dinner explained, "I don't really care what I eat, if it's healthy or not," a popular sentiment throughout the young 20s crowd.

While working 30-35 hours as a checker and going to school full time, construction-management major Tom Eyler would cook if he had the time but instead subsists on turkey sandwiches for days on end.

A few students are conscientious, re-creating the healthy meals of home. Senior Lacey Androsko, who cooked spaghetti and carrots for dinner noted that her habits are probably very different from the majority of students who eat whatever is cheap — and that usually doesn't include fruits or vegetables.

It would make a nutritionist weep, but plenty of students such as grad student Gus Takala are health conscious but they just don't care. "I know what's good and what's bad," said Takala, "but do I apply that? No," he said, providing the all-purpose excuse: "I'm young."

Three fourths of Takala's meals, ranging from frozen waffles to frozen cordon bleu, are toaster ready.

Students' dinners are microwaved late and inhaled even later. For example, Eyler, who estimated his work week to be 80 hours, said that he has breakfast in the afternoon. "Everything is shifted three hours," he said.

With erratic schedules, it's difficult for students to eat at a normal hour. Those who share apartments don't share meals. They sometimes eat together but each prepares and eats a different dish, as if in restaurant. Others divide dinner into two parts, the first meal around 5 p.m. and dinner II after midnight.

The perception may be that girls' diets are healthier but for budgeted college students, gender disparities disappear. Take sophomore Jessica Lanz; she blamed her inability to cook a meal on her "tiredness factor." Instead, she wolfed a dinner of coffee and two slices of chocolate-frosted yellow cake.

For senior Ann Chang, "cooking is pushing buttons on the microwave." Since she is only cooking for herself, her attitude is, why bother?

With traditional meals for the whole apartment rarely happening, most students opt for 10 for 10 deals at QFC, such as 10 packs of mac & cheese or boxes of cereal for $10. The value that dinner once held at home dies on campus.

Karl Pauly, who ranks sleep as "more important than eating," said that laziness forces him to dine on frozen burritos and cup of noodles.

"The only thing you end up using is the thing it comes in, so you don't even have to do dishes," said Pauly, who, at 9:45 p.m., decided on a dinner of beer.

The elegant dinners that consist of food on a plate accompanied by a glass of wine are nonexistent. For junior Erickson, social nights of drinking are usually followed by "pizza, chips, cheese dip or popcorn, when we get the munchies."

Though most of these students are aware of their bad eating habits, do they think they will change? "What I eat is very fattening and it's all very frustrating" admitted cake-dining Lanz, "but unless I get a live-in chef, it isn't going to change."

Rachel Wood is a University of Washington sophomore and a freelance writer.