How Does The Choice Of Housing Affect College Students’ Food Habits

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How does the choice of Housing Affect College Students’ Food Habits?
Background
Studies on the eating habits among college students have no details on the scope about the housing choices. Majority of college students choose foods based on how they stay within or outside the colleges. In most cases, the students especially those who stay on campuses eat fatty foods, inadequate servings that are rich in nutrients, limited fruits, and green vegetables among others. Therefore, poor nutrition and obesity incidences are some of the current challenges affecting the student in the colleges. Students are usually faced with a variety of predictors of poor eating habits and obesity especially food consumption as a result of housing choice. Students love community living in colleges. The foodstuff environments, as well as eating places, are major contributors to the rise of poor eating habits and the epidemics among the students primarily in United States (Glanz et al. 330). Students who choose to live on campus and hostels have no choice but to eat foods from the dining halls. However, such eating places lack different foods that students may choose to eat. Thus, students may not make the right choice of eating habit such as eating healthy foods that are nutritious. The limitation of food choices in the dining hall becomes their habit health go for the unhealthy food habits. For example, the students only eat the foods provided in the daily meal plan, the students may choose to go and eat out irrespective of their paid house foods, and students may choose to cook hurriedly in microwaves since there are no cooking facilities in the hostels (Glanz et al. 330).
Statement problem
College environments and housing contribute to the poor choices of food habits that are responsible for weight gains. Such impacts are mainly escalated by the lifestyle and socio-economic factors. Chourdakis et al. note that students who reside on-campus and hostels within the institution receive foodstuff that is have saturated fat, sodium, total fat, and cholesterol. Besides, these students have a low intake of foods that have polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, vitamin E, fibers and folate (Chourdakis et al. 383). The reason for such food choices is that the different dining halls in such colleges do not provide healthy food options. Therefore, the choice of housing in colleges affects students’ food habits.
Students who live in colleges begin to express their interests and desire to have healthier food choices and habits. Therefore, most of them leave the limited food choices in colleges and opt to stay outside college environments where they have unlimited choices to food habits. Besides, most students begin to eat away from the residence halls. Separately, other students live near food groceries and stalls to get nutritious foods that they prepare themselves hence before eating (Hagen, Krishna and McFerran 589). Providing foods with limited nutritional values or offering limited food choices in the residence halls could lead to poor food choices among the students who stay within the school. Therefore, students choose to look for alternative housing to ensure that they get the right food habit choices. Thus, most students opt to live outside colleges to avoid the unhealthy food choices within the residence halls. Therefore, the study purposes to examine how the housing choices among students affect their food habits in colleges. Besides, the study will answer the below research question: How does the choice of Housing Affect College Students’ Food Habits?
Key Points In Support Of the Topic
1 The type of housing during college affects students’ food habits because depending on where they live and if they have access to a kitchen and food supply they can benefit from homemade meals, improving their health.
2 The Journal of American College Health showed that students who live on campus and who are obligated to purchase a meal plan tend to eat more than recommended and therefore jeopardize their health.
3 This study shows that students benefit from living near grocery stores by having access to healthier nutrients, on the other side it reveals that the diet quality also depends on the quantity and the variety of these stores.
Literary Expansion of the points
The literature review for the present study focuses on the three main points regarding the topic. Therefore, this section will elaborate in details the following topical points. The first point indicates that residence areas with kitchen and homemade meals improve the health of students. Secondly, students who stay on campus and buy the meal plans eat more than the recommended hence jeopardize their health. Lastly, the literature review will conclude with the benefits of living near grocery stores and diet quality based on the quantity and varieties of the stores.
Date Base: Academic Search Complete
Point 1: Available kitchen and homemade meals improve the health of students
Ball and Brown indicated in their qualitative research on the description of college students’ dinner groups that enhancing dinner groups among students in colleges either among the roommates who share an apartment or on-campuses where students have good social network system and stay within reachable proximities to each other increase their involvement in cooking, planning of meals and improve their skills which promote their health (Ball and Brown 34). Besides, the authors noted that the students could rotate dinner preparation schedule which increases their confidence in meal preparation, saving money and eating healthier foods with a variety of nutrients. Thus, dinner groups promote college students' eating habits (Ball and Brown 34).
Secondly, research conducted by Larson et al. that associated food preparation by young adults with better diet quality indicated that majority of the food preparation behaviors were not evident among the young adults in colleges. Besides, such behaviors were less significant concerning male, race and campus housing. The students possessed lower skills for food preparation with resources for food. However, the young adults who frequently prepared foods were less likely to consume fast-foods and met dietary objectives for low-fat consumptions, required calcium intake, fruit intake, vegetable intake and whole grain consumption (Larson et al. 2007).
Separately, Hansen conducted a study on how students consume fruits, vegetables, sweetened beverages based on dinner group participation. The results indicated that students who participate in dinner groups take less soda than the non-dinner participants with no difference in fruit and vegetable intake among the different groups. The students who took part in dinner groups perceived better health and improvement in the intake of fruit and vegetables. The benefits of participating in dinner group enhanced reduction in the intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (Hansen ...