It’s amazing how many results you get when you do a simple search on the web containing “college student” and “diet”. The majority of your results are healthy eating tips and articles containing advice for college students. I sometimes wonder if the people writing these articles remember what it’s like to be in college, or even if they’ve ever been to college. Well I remember; I just started.

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I am a freshman and I have just completed my first semester of college. I moved out of the house in August of 2005, so I have only been on my own for about 4 months. In those four months I have barely had time to get 8 hours of sleep, much less eat an occasional well-balanced meal. The only well balanced meal I’ve had at all is when it is possible, which isn’t often, for me to make a trip to my parent’s house for dinner, and that of course does not qualify for a healthy diet all together.
Not only have I been cramped for time, but money as well, and yes, we all know food does cost money. I work as a waitress at Pappadeaux which can sometimes yield quite a bit of money. Although on a normal day I earn no more than $40. My weekly earnings average about $250 on a good week. That’s $1000 a month, $12,000 a year. Not very much when you take into consideration how much things cost now a days. I have rent to pay, car payment, a cat to care for, and of course necessities such as food. No where in my budget is there room for a night out with the girls, or a movie with my boyfriend; unless of course I was to sacrifice some of my necessities. That doesn’t mean cutting out food in general, simply eating the cost efficient foods.
Let me take you on a tour of what my pantry consists of at this very moment. A loaf of bread $3.29, some peanut butter $2.37, 3 boxes of macaroni cheese 67 cents a box, 11 packages of ramen noodle 10 cents each, 4 soup in a cup 56 cents each, and several packages of instant mashed potatoes that my mother gave me, free. That comes to a total of $10.91. Then there is my freezer which simply contains 8 TV. dinners at about $1.39 each, coming to a grand total of $22.03. That takes care of a little over 2 months of eating. This seems like a long time for this amount of food to last but keep in mind that I do not have time to eat three meals a day so I am usually limited to two.
As you can tell, these aren’t exactly the ingredients for the healthy diet that so many articles suggest. Of course, being in college I know plenty of other college students who go through the same dilemma that I have. We have actually sat around and talked about our pathetic attempts to eat on a daily bases and found it quite humorous. And as awful as these articles on the web make it seem, college diets aren’t so bad. I haven’t gained an extreme amount of wait, such as the legendary “freshman 15”, and neither have any of my friends (although I do have one more semester left). Most importantly, I still feel great and actually enjoy the occasional movie and girl’s night out because of my college diet. Although sometimes I crave some really expensive shrimp, simply because it is expensive, or because, yes I do get tired of ramen noodles. But that is why I work at Pappadeaux which happens to be a very expensive seafood restaurant. Of course I look forward to the day when I can go to the grocery store and actually buy ingredients for a full course meal; and on top of that, have the time to come home and proceed to cook this idealistic meal. That will be the day my college diet comes to an end.

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