Changing the Detrimental Eating Habits of College Students:

A Proposal for a Traveling Nutrition Symposium

McCraight J, Placentra V, Skinner H, Sledge R
English 2001-H
Dr. Leslie Cook
21 November 2014

Abstract/Executive Summary
We are proposing a traveling nutrition symposium and advocacy campaign directed towards
college students. Healthy eating habits such as limiting red and processed meat consumption, proper
portion control, and fundamentally understanding where food comes from are solidified during the
college years and thus can determine risk factors in developing cardiovascular disease and other
health issues later in life.
This campaign will address the five unhealthiest college campuses as determined by a survey
from Mens Fitness Magazine: University of Louisiana at Lafayette, University of New Orleans,
Mississippi State University, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and Portland State
University, and partner with their individual respective student dietetics associations. Our goal for
this campaign is to include a healthy menu to be served in their dining halls prepared by local chefs
focusing on affordable, heart-healthy food. It will also include a guest lecture by esteemed journalist
and food politics expert, Michael Pollan, dorm room cooking demonstrations, and a petition for
students to affect change in their own dining halls.
This project will take approximately ten weeks. Five weeks are needed to prepare materials,
contact schools, and make arrangements with schools and guest speakers. The remaining five weeks
will be spent at the five schools, actively campaigning and culminating with the symposium and
guest speaker at each university. The projected cost is $234,420.
With this campaign, we hope to increase college students awareness of current issues with
the food industry and healthy eating and provide them with the tools to affect change in their own
communities. If we are able to accomplish this, students will establish healthier lifestyle habits that
they carry with them throughout life. Quantitative and qualitative assessments will be conducted in a
years time to evaluate the effectiveness of this project. These may include, but are not limited to

changes in blood pressure, weight, and quality of foods consumed and provided on campus.
Ultimately, this will create a healthier generation of educated Americans.

Background/existing base of knowledge

Tori Placentra is a sophomore honors student at Appalachian State University majoring in
chemistry. She has been participating in chemistry research for over three years. Ms. Placentra spent
several years as a vegetarian, was raised in a very health-conscious family, and is familiar with the
frustration that comes with the lack of quality and nutritious foods available when eating most meals
on campus. Her background in chemistry allows her to understand how food and nutrition affect the
body on a fundamental level.
Rachel Sledge is a sophomore exercise science major with a pre-professional concentration in
the Honors College at Appalachian State University. Ms. Sledge attended a farm school during her
childhood to which she credits her passion for cooking with natural, local foods. As a resident of a
dormitory on a meal plan, she understands the struggles many college students face in figuring out
how to maintain a healthy diet while confined to the options provided by dining halls.
Holly Skinner is a sophomore pre-med psychology student at Appalachian State University.
She has been a part of the Honors College her entire time at the university, and her psychology major
along with her minors in chemistry and medical humanities have given her a unique look on the
health and habits of college students. She has experienced the issues with eating healthfully while
relying on college dining halls, and she is passionate about increasingly educating herself and other
college students about the food they eat.
Jordan McCraight is a sophomore nutrition and dietetics student in the Honors College at
Appalachian State University. Her fascination with all things health-related began in high school and
has lead her to pursue a career in Global Health. As a college student, she has first-hand experience

with the issues presented by eating from a dining hall on a daily basis, and strives to help educate
other college students on the importance of practicing healthy eating habits.
A fundamental tenet of establishing healthy eating habits is engaging in proper portion
control. While the idea of portion control has been taught in schools for over 50 years, many people
are still unaware as to what constitutes a proper portion of food. The United States Department of
Agriculture sets forth a series of guidelines that detail what constitutes a serving size and updates
these recommendations every few years based on new research. In 1956, the first chart that included
serving sizes was introduced by the USDA called Food for Fitness: a Daily Food Guide. The
serving recommendations are roughly the same as they are today, over 50 years later. Today, the
USDA uses MyPlate, a visual graphic of a dinner plate that is divided into food groups per the
recommendations.
One of the primary problems is the fact that the USDA only provides guidelines on what
constitutes a serving, not a portion. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics sums up the difference
succinctly on their website: a serving is the amount of food recommended in consumer education
materials such as MyPlate. A portion is the amount of a food you choose to eat at any one timewhich may be more or less than a serving (Serving Size vs. Portion Size: Is There a Difference?).
So, a 1.5 oz muffin that was one portion and contained one serving of grains 20 years ago, today is
one portion at 5 oz but has three servings and 310 more calories (NHLBI Portion Distortion Quiz).
This change is most evident in packaged food which makes up roughly 70% of the average American
diet (Fairfield). Busy college students are no exception to this statistic. Even when serving
themselves, students tend to underestimate how much they are choosing because they have been
normalized to inappropriately larger portions from restaurants and packaged food (Schwartz, Young).
While overeating in general can have negative effects on a persons health and weight, the
most detrimental effects come from the over-consumption of red meat. Many studies have been
conducted to see if there is a relationship between red meat consumption and various terminal

illnesses. The results of these studies are very similar. A National Institutes of Health-AARP study
found that people who ate the most red and processed meat over a 10-year-period were likely to die
sooner than those who ate less. The study concluded that those who ate about 4 ounces of red meat a
day were more likely to die of cancer or heart disease than those who ate the least, about a half-ounce
a day (Feature, 4). Another study found that individuals who consumed a Western-style diet had an
increased risk of heart disease, cancer, and death from other causes (Feature, 6). In a study put on by
a group of Harvard researchers, the data showed that people who ate more red meat tended to die
younger, and to die more often from cardiovascular disease and cancer...to weigh more, exercise less,
smoke tobacco more, and drink more alcohol than healthier people in the study (New Releases).
This particular study also compensated for the effects of an overall unhealthy lifestyle, and still saw
an association between red meat consumption and mortality (New Releases). Another study, put on
by the National Cancer Institute, found that those who ate the most red meat daily were 30 percent
more likely to die of any cause during a 10-year period than were those who ate the least amount of
red meat (Nutrition and Healthy Eating). All of these studies seem to come to the same
conclusion: over-consumption of red meat can have adverse affects to an individuals health.

Statement of Need
Health problems related to unhealthy eating habits are rampant in todays society.
Seventy-five percent of Americans are overweight or obese, childhood obesity is steadily on the
rise, and heart disease continues to the be the number one cause of death in the United States
(Leading Causes of Death). These are just some of the implications of bad eating habits, and
professionals have shown that the eating habits we establish in childhood and adolescence carry
on throughout our lives. It could be argued that eating habits established in ones college years
have an even greater effect on ones future health and eating habits. Many students have not been
educated on how to eat properly, especially while living off of college food.

Most Americans, including college students, do not eat the recommended five servings of
fruits and vegetables daily, and the tendency of Americans today is to eat larger portions of meat
and carbohydrates, things that should be limited in ones daily diet. Sixty percent of Americans
do not engage in moderate exercise for at least 30 minutes five times a week, as recommended
by the American College of Sports Medicine. College students who eat the majority of their
meals in dining halls have limited options, few of which meet recommended guidelines.
Nutritional information in dining halls is often incomplete and hard to access. College is the first
environment where students have the opportunity to be completely responsible for their own
food choices, and are often unprepared to make informed decisions about what they choose to
eat. Portions served in cafeterias are often much larger than a standard serving size, and many
students are unaware of how much they are eating when serving themselves. Combined with the
distractions of homework and communal dining hall settings, it is difficult for students to eat
mindfully and thus many inadvertently consume too much.
The average amount of red meat consumed is much higher than what is recommended.
As of 2012, the average meat consumption per person in the United States was 270.7 pounds (A
Nation of Meat Eaters). With this large intake of red meat comes an increase in deaths due to
illnesses such as cardiovascular disease and cancer. While research has had some mixed results,
the majority of studies have repeatedly supported this claim. There are multiple alternatives to
red meat, as well as ways to limit ones red meat consumption. Limiting or eliminating ones red
meat consumption is beneficial to an individuals overall health and could lower disease risk.
Another major component of nutritional awareness is knowing where food comes from.
Frequently, consumers get food from the supermarket without thought or care as to where it
came from, if it was harvested sustainably and if the people who harvested it were fairly

compensated. Most foods, including so called fresh fruits and vegetables, travel hundreds or
even thousands of miles before getting to a market. This drives up the price of fresh produce,
often making it an unattainable for college students and university food services.
Busy college students also tend to be grazers instead of sitting down for a proper meal, so
the types of foods chosen are less nutritious (packaged) snack foods. The majority of college
students eat in distracting dining hall situations which increases their dependence on visual cues,
say an empty bag of potato chips or large plate, rather than listening to their bodies to know
when they have had enough. If the chip package contains two servings, it is incredibly easy to
overeat unknowingly.
Project Description
The ideals of this project will be carried out by a traveling nutrition symposium and
advocacy campaign, including a keynote speaker, chefs specializing in healthy cooking, and the
campaign advocates, including the individuals who started the campaign. The campaign will be
directed towards college students in order to instill healthy eating habits such as limiting red and
processed meat consumption, proper portion control, and fundamentally understanding where
food comes from to gain a better understanding of the food system as a whole. These students
will hopefully take the information we give them and implement the recommendations in their
own lives along with a new ability to cook their own healthy food with the limited resources
available to them.
A variety of psychological factors and implications, such as familial influence, societal
acceptance of bad eating habits, and stress, greatly contribute to why people eat what they do.
Tired college students are more likely to eat junk food, according to recent studies. Healthy
eating is also impacted by what others around you are eating. Eating a lot and eating a little are

both unhealthy habits-- they are commonly referred to as binge eating cycles. In addition, eating
has become somewhat of a social event, especially for the younger population, and can easily
lead to the overeating of junk food. Female and male students alike will reward themselves with
unhealthy food at the end of a stressful or long day or week, thinking that they deserve it. This
is an extremely dangerous way to think of food.
A huge part of college for almost all students is stress. Stress has been shown to have a
significant impact on the way college students eat, and stress combined with a busy schedule can
lead to terrible eating habits, both related to what, when in the day, and how much stressed
students eat. Some people eat a lotmostly junk foodwhen stressed, and some eat very little
to nothing. In addition, stressed and busy students often wont eat until late at night. Night eating
is a habit strongly discouraged by health professionals, and it can develop into a repeating habit
that be increasingly difficult to break. We will educate them about this issue and give helpful tips
on how to curb junk food cravings while studying late and avoid night eating if at all possible.
Another issue we will address during our time at each school is the importance of
appropriate portion sizes. Since the 1970s, serving sizes have increased dramatically in the
United States. As a country, we are eating roughly 200 more calories per day than we were 50
years ago. This trend directly correlates to our growing waistlines and the superincumbent
obesity epidemic. Eating extra calories and larger portion sizes daily is unfortunately normal in
todays society. College students are still at the age when what they eat may not show
detrimental effects physically, but they need to understand how their current choices and habits
can carry on throughout their lives and negatively affect their health in the future. This growth
extends into every area of food consumption: packaging, restaurant portions, even cookbooks.
While unhealthy portions are seemingly unavoidable in todays society and especially in the

students dining halls, students can be informed and intelligent about how much they should eat
of certain food groups. We will show them how to use and understand the MyPlate system,
which has replaced the Food Pyramid as the recommended way to judge portions. On college
campuses, students often overeat because portions served in dining halls and in vending
machines are deceptively larger than an appropriate portion size. Even when serving themselves,
students often take much more than they realize and eat in distracted situations.
Eating in distracting dining hall situations increases the likeliness that a college student is
using visual cues, such as an empty plate to determine when they should finish eating instead of
listening to their bodies hunger cues. Part of the problem is that portions served in dining halls
have increased dramatically over time and on larger plates. In a study at a health and fitness
camp conducted by Cornell University, campers given larger bowls consumed 16% more cereal
than those who were given smaller bowls, and the group that ate out of a larger bowl estimated
that they ate 7% less than they actually did compared to the smaller bowl group (Wasinisk). In
similar studies, subjects who ate the smaller portion in the smaller bowl reported feeling just as
satisfied as those who ate a larger portion from a larger bowl.
Students are also grossly uninformed about where their food comes from-- both the food
from their respective dining halls as well as the food they regularly pick up from chains like
Walmart or Harris Teeter. It is a reflection of the ongoing corruption of the food industry and
how far from natural food has become. One example is the inhumane treatment of animals. Most
meat comes from animals raised on factory farms. Students are most likely either unaware of this
or simply dont care. We will strive to educate students about the farms and corporations
processes of getting meat to their plates, putting a strong focus on red meats. We do not wish to
scare or disgust students by these processes, though they can be shocking, and our goal is not to

make students vegetarians or vegans. We will educate them the best we can and hopefully teach
effective ways to limit red meat consumption. In order to help with limiting red meat, students
can substitute other high-protein foods in place of it in their diets. Some of these foods include
beans and legumes, vegetarian refried beans, and tofu. By making these changes, students can
greatly decrease their risk of becoming ill, and overall improve their quality of life.
In addition, mega food corporations are primarily responsible for how processed food has
become. Consumers are hard pressed to find any affordable packaged product at a supermarket
that does not contain high fructose corn syrup or partially hydrogenated oils or trans fats. Trans
fats are sometimes called partially hydrogenated oils which are chemically modified fats. The
health effects caused by these chemicals and manufactured products are highly debated, but there
seems to be a consensus among healthcare professionals that the effects are adverse. Most
students are on a budget and are likely to choose the cheapest food they can find at the
supermarket. As a result, the majority of their foods are likely to contain these chemical and
manufactured products, which can have negative effects on their health long-term.
We believe that simply telling students what to eat and how much will not be an effective
way to get our ideals across. College students are more engaged with hands-on presentations.
Thus, the dorm cooking demonstration shows students how they can make healthy choices even
when they only have a microwave and a most likely unreliable oven at their disposal. We will
also implement other interactive activities and lecture sessions to hopefully get the students
passionate about this issue. Organizations and individuals have tried before to bring eating habit
and food preparation reform to places like college campuses, but many students wouldnt see or
understand the issue in its entirety. Others may come to a campus for a day and lecture for an
hour or so, but this short-term method is not very effective. By making our program a week-long

event, we hope to see people return and bring friends as the seminars and demonstrations carry
on.
We will work at each school for a week and implement the ideas and practices listed
above. One afternoon out of each week will be dedicated to a three hour cooking demonstration.
These demonstrations will be performed by local chefs that have extensive experience cooking
healthy meals. Each chef will be offered thirty dollars per hour. Annes Table is a restaurant
located in Lafayatte, Louisiana that is committed to providing quality, healthy food for people.
The menu includes a variety of vegetarian and meat options with a local flare that include fresh
produce and whole grains. Carmo is a tropical restaurant is dedicated to being a sustainable
business; it has certifications from several environmental and conservation organizations, both
local and national. Carmo is the only restaurant in the state of Louisiana to be certified by
Seafood Watch. High Noon Cafe is an all vegetarian restaurant that claims to only use USDAcertified organic dairy, organic produce and never uses GMOs, trans fats, hydrogenated oils, or
MSG. Although the goal of the project is not to create vegetarians, High Noons fun and varied
cuisine would be a way to show students that food without meat can still be interesting and
delicious. High Noon is located in Jackson, Mississippi which is 128 miles from Mississippi
State University, but there were no viable healthy restaurant options in the town of Mississippi
State. Longbranch Cafe is a business that is invested in providing quality food for consumers and
supporting the local economy and the environment. Longbranch recycles food scraps and coffee
grounds in the form of compost. The cafe is supplied with free range eggs from a farm in
Missouri that is 57 miles away. Riyadhs is a Lebanese restaurant in Portland. The menu
consists of lean vegetarian and meat options. The flavorful cuisine will provide the students with
a unique and enriching food experience. From each restaurant, we hope to acquire our local chef,

as well as the resources that will be required for the demonstration.The purpose of these
demonstrations will be to show the students that cooking healthy meals can be not only be simple
and cheap, but also fun. We are hoping that after witnessing the chefs create delicious, healthy
meals, they will be inspired to attempt to re-create them on their own.
Another large part of the symposium is our keynote speaker, Michael Pollan. The
purpose of bringing in Mr. Pollan is to raise awareness on the topics surrounding this event.
Hopefully having an influential, famous nutrition expert speaking to the students will impress
them and inspire them to change their habits and, in turn, their lives. He is renowned for his
writing and speeches, and we feel he could have a real impact on the students who attend our
sessions.
College students, as a whole, are a busy population. Getting the word out about an event
on a college campus is not necessarily hard, but getting the students to hear details of the event
and want to attend can be difficult. Therefore, we are mainly going to rely on word-of-mouth and
a social media publicity campaign to relay the information about our program. We will have
posters printed and give them to the schools ASDAs to distribute around their campuses in the
week or two before we arrive. If we can get people sharing the event on sites like Facebook and
committing to go, more are likely to show up than if we used posters or physical means of
advertising alone.
Budget
The majority of our budget will go toward travel expenses and paying our Keynotes
speaker, Michael Pollan. At $45,000 per engagement, we will need $225,000 in order to pay
Pollan for all five appearances. While this fee may seem high for a public speaker, Michael
Pollan is considered the face of the whole food movement and is a respected expert on on the

topics we are addressing. His fame and expertise are essential for attracting a large audience. We
will also need to pay the local chefs in order for them to work with us during cooking
demonstrations. At $30 an hour for three hours, each of the five chefs will be earning $90 a
piece, totalling $450 overall.
Travel expenses will include hotel fees and transportation. For 33 days, over the span of
five weeks, We will need to book two hotel rooms in order to accommodate the four researchers.
At $100 a night, this will come to a total of $6600. The transportation, which will be by car, will
require $2000 in order to pay for gas expenses and mileage.
For the advertisements, we plan on having posters printed and distributed around the
multiple campuses. With 200 posters per campus, the total of 1000 posters will cost $370.
We plan on the venues and food supplies being of no cost to us. The venues will be
booked through the schools Student Dietetic Associations, and the food will be donated by
local restaurants and the campus food services.
Our overall budget totals to $234,420.
Conclusion: Statement of Outcomes
With this campaign, we hope to raise awareness among the college population about the
adverse health effects of poor eating habits, such as the over-consumption of red meat, engaging
in binge eating behaviors, and not practicing mindful eating. We also hope to educate a majority
of each campus students about where the food for their dining halls comes from.Our intended
outcome from this campaign is that the students we reach out to will in turn educate others on
their campus about these issues.
Making healthy decisions about food has become increasingly difficult with the
convoluted state of the food industry, the overwhelming amount of misinformation floating

around, and the distortion of portion sizes. However, being educated enough to make those
healthy decisions has become increasingly paramount in order to form a healthier society less
susceptible to disease. Perhaps one of the best places to begin this education is with young
people. College students are known to live in highly stressful environments with minimal access
to quality foods.
With limited tools available to them, college students, especially those that live in
dormitories, are at the mercy of the options served in the dining hall. However, bringing in
experts who can show students how to make the most of the options available to them and use
the limited food options and tools (microwave, mini fridge, communal dorm kitchen, and a small
amount of cookware), they can make educated decisions about what they put in their bodies.
These experts and local chefs can also work with the chefs at each schools dining hall to make
the healthiest food possible with the schools available options. We want to give the opportunity
for students to implement changes in their schools dining hall menus to provide students with
alternative choices that are affordable, healthy, and delicious. The students petition will
hopefully be enthusiastically taken up by each school as ways to improve the general health of
their individual campuses. We hope that this campaign will inspire students to take control of
their health through proper eating habits so that they do not become a part of the unhealthy
America, much less part of the 30% of American adults who are obese. Future research will be
conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this program and determine its continuation.
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