College Eating Options

Ever since I started my new healthy eating, I've found it increasingly difficult to find a variety of healthy foods that still taste good. I go to GW and we don't have a cafeteria, so our options are a salad bar, a sandwich bar, soup, Italian food, Friday's, Wendy's, Chick-Fil-A, Chinese Food, a Jamba Juice type store, Bagels, or the Wingery which serves buffalo wings and french fries, among other things. I find myself eating the same things every week, and I'm really starting to have a hard time keeping to my diet with such scant choices. Does anyone have any good suggestions for how to eat better with such limited options.

Well, it's hard to give good suggestions when I don't know the details of your diet, but I, too, am a college student eating healthier and I know how tough it can be to choose the lesser of the evils that make up campus food choices.

I tend not to eat at school to avoid that burnout, but if you're only option is to eat at school, then try alternating weeks from salads to sandwiches to options from Friday's that are low calorie. Your Friday's may not have it, but some around here offer Atkin's Diet friendly menu choices. It's a start, even if you're not following the Atkins fad. Try, too, just choosing the mix-and-match option. When I do eat at school and none of the meal choices appeal to me, I will buy a banana, an Odwalla bar (health food bar), and a small bag of mixed nuts (the grams of fat can be really high, but the fats found in peanuts, cashews, and almonds are actually very good for you, so it's okay to indulge once in a while in them).

Other times I may buy a fruit cup and one of the cups of low-fat yogurt with berries, etc. If all else fails, and you're stuck to salads and sandwiches, investigate low-calorie sauces to spice things up a bit (green chili Tobasco sauce is excellent sprinkled on salad). This way, at least, the flavours vary even if the food is the same.

My college doesn't have a cafeteria either. I think they have the basic pizza, fried chicken, etc options, plus a college restaurant. I've only eaten there twice, so I don't quite recall.

As a college student, I'm on a budget (not really, but I am a horrible penny pincher), so eating out doesn't appeal to me (at least healthy eating out). What I've found for healthy eating at college is:

Soups

I bought a huge two gallon stock pot and every week or two I cook up a huge batch of some soup I've found online. I then dish it up into separate tuppaware, freeze them, and make my own healthy, cheap frozen dinners that I can pop in the microwave. It's delicious, it gives you a variety (whatever you can cook!), it's healty (usually less than 200 calories a serving) and it's extremely cheap (50cents to a dollar per serving).

Frozen dinners

I love the convenience of frozen dinners and before I figured out that I could make my own, I used to get this brand called (hope this doesn't violate the product promotional rule) Michelina's Lean Gourmet which is low fat, low calories, and about $1 per dish.

Fresh fruit

Fresh fruit makes the best snacks, and also breakfast. Again, I like convenience, so I don't go for anything that has to be refrigerated or prepared. I get about two dozen pieces of apples, oranges, and bananas a week and eat on those throughout the week.

Sandwiches

Another great low-cost, low-calorie, low-fat, high-nutrtion foods. When I first started eating healthy, I went on a (healthy) binge of sandwiches and ate them everyday for a month or two. You can buy bread, the meat, and whatever veggie toppings you want and make filling sandwiches. Again, if you like convenience, I prepared sandwiches for the next 3-4 days and wrapped them up and refrigerated them until I wanted them.

The great thing also with sandwiches is all of the toppings as well as the variety of condiments that you can mix up to give yourself a lot of variety. I discovered soy mayonnaisse which goes great on a sandwich (if you love mayo).

 

 

I hope you find some of it useful. The soup idea has been my favorite; however, if you don't have anything to cook in (or if you just plain don't like to cook), there should be plenty of other options available.

i always buy beef jerky &some chocolate milk when i forget to pack something. but when i do pack, i get almonds, oatmeal, fruits, &eggs.

have you considered just cooking for yourself? it's a lot easier to keep track of calories and where all your food comes from when you make it yourself rather than just hoping that the "healthy" veggie stir-fry you're eating wasn't cooked in butter. i go to school in dc too (georgetown) and there are quite a few supermarkets around, so i would just go and buy a bunch of fresh fruits, veggies, and healthy microwavable meals to supplement your meal plan.

yes, it's quite annoying espcially since I HAD to pay for a meal plan, and didn't even get the option of preparing my own meals. D: I end up buying a lot of my own stuff anyways, like frozen dinners, soups, broths, sugarfree jello, fresh fruit (we actually don't have it in our caf! crazy), etc. the cafeteria's are quite unhealthy here but they post the nutritional information of everything they are serving that day online, so I always check it out and plan my meals before I go to the caf. They have a vegan food station which is always quite healthy, and some of the veggies options that aren't loaded with cream and cheese are good too... but other than that I usually stick with the salad bar and the stir-fry stations. not a lot of variety I'm afraid. Also they only ever have white pasta or white rice, which makes me angry because the only whole grains I can get are slices of bread (which are getting pretty boring during every meal!)