Most Dartmouth students don't mentally calculate their protein intake for the day while waiting in the Food Court grill line. Few worry about whether they're getting a full serving, or three, of veggies or cheese or tofu when they throw together a Collis salad. There's no denying that academics, extracurricular involvement and/or raging have a way of taking up so much of Joe and Jane Dartmouth's time and brain space. Thinking about good nutrition just isn't always a priority. While the Freshman 15 may not happen to everyone, college eating is definitely very different from eating out in the real world, as every student transitioning from home to school for the first time soon discovers.
"I had the freshman negative 15," recalled Brett Andrews '09. Andrews attributes his weight loss to a combination of exercising "a lot" and living in the East Wheelock cluster, which meant a long, cold walk to Thayer Dining Hall. The proximity of students' residences to the dining halls can have a big impact on their eating habits -- reluctance to brave the cold and go get dinner can lead to either skipping meals or ordering EBA's five nights a week, neither of which is ideal nutrition-wise.
Andrews' experience does tend to be the exception, though -- it's common for students to find themselves eating more at college than they did while they were living at home. But this isn't always just because food is so readily available here. "I eat a lot more, actually, because I'm exercising a lot more now," Tom Wang '07 said. For Wang, the added calories haven't been a problem, probably because exercise balances them out nicely. "Besides, I don't drink enough to gain weight," he said.
Claudette Peck, the Dick's House staff nutritionist and coordinator of nutrition programs, sees students for a variety of concerns around food and weight issues.
"Probably a third of the students that I see, come in in relation to an eating disorder, or disordered eating," Peck said. "The rest is divided out into wanting to lose weight, wanting to improve their performance and just wanting to understand how to better manage their eating habits because they aren't eating the way they used to when they were at home."
According to Peck, living away from home for the first time can dramatically affect students' eating patterns. "How to create a balanced meal is a challenge, just a basic challenge for some students," she said. She also emphasized that DDS food is often more nutritious than students imagine. "There's always this kind of myth that surrounds college eating, that somehow it's not as healthy as it might be at home," Peck noted. "There are many, many healthy choices on campus, it just may not look the same as what Mom or Dad would cook at home."
May-Lieng Karageorge '09 noted that it can be difficult for students to keep track of how many calories they consume over the course of a day -- especially if a good portion of them aren't coming from food. "You're at Novack, you get chai. That's like loaded with fat," she said.
Karageorge cited the variety of dining halls and meal options at Dartmouth as encouraging students to overindulge. She also noted that healthier alternatives tend to be less popular among students. For example, few students think about good nutrition when ordering EBA's at two in the morning. "You're not gonna be like, 'Give me the Caesar salad with low-fat dressing,'" Karageorge said. "That's not gonna happen. You're gonna get the chicken wings and the pizza."
Mark Tuthill, a manager at EBA's, estimates that Dartmouth students make up roughly 60 to 70 percent of the restaurant's overall business. He reported that EBA's homemade breadsticks are one of the most popular items for late-night orders. It's the buffalo chicken pizza, though, that students seem to crave most in the wee hours of the morning. "At the end of the night, we sell more of those than anything else," he said.
As the temperature drops, the number of delivery orders tends to increase for all off-campus eateries. "It has been popular," Boloco manager Matt Taylor said of the restaurant's evening delivery service. "Particularly the colder it gets and the further [the students] live from Thayer Dining Hall."
It's pretty clear that eating healthy can seem difficult at Dartmouth, particularly during the winter months. But it may not be as impossible as you think. "It really is about relaxing and being flexible in your eating and doing the best you can," Peck said. Keep that margin of error in mind the next time you're feeling guilt pangs over claiming that lost EBA's delivery man in Novack.
