Eating out unhealthy choice for students
Janae Hatcher, Assistant Managing Editor
Though restaurants are sometimes called the social lifeline of college students, frequenting them can have serious consequences for the average college student.
I’m not saying college students need to quit eating at restaurants. I enjoy going to them with my friends on the weekend. However, students in particular run the risk of getting into an eating-out rut because it’s just easier and generally quicker to eat out when there’s so much else to do.
Plus, no one likes to eat alone, and eating out offers a chance to socialize when otherwise it would have been nose-in-the-books all night long.
However, even with all the pros, there are three reasons college students should avoid eating out every night.
First, most college students have jobs, scholarships or loans from which they get the needed money to live. Restaurants, even “cheap” fast food ones, are a mostly a rip-off. Getting a turkey sandwich and chips for over six dollars turns my stomach. I went to the grocery store the other day and bought turkey, bread, cheese and mayonnaise for a tad over eight dollars. I’ve been eating on that for two weeks. Second, restaurants generally do not use the best-quality foods. They have to make money, so they buy in bulk. These bulk foods are often made with preservatives, and they usually aren’t healthy.
Even sit-down restaurants, where salads and the like are available for the health-conscious, the dressings have an ingredient list of mostly unpronounceable items. For people with allergies, it is sometimes difficult to tell what seasonings are used in the dishes.
Fast food restaurants are a whole different ball game. Sit-down restaurants at least resemble something you’d make at home, something you’d eat if you knew what went in it.
The chain fast food restaurants that we all love so well are the unhealthiest places to frequent. At Burger King, for example, a double whopper with cheese has 63 grams of fat, 960 calories and 195 mg of cholesterol. A chicken sandwich can give you 43 grams of fat, 710 calories and 60 mg of cholesterol. At McDonald’s, a typical lunch of a Big Mac, large fries and coke will run you 53 grams of fat, 1,320 calories and 85 mg of cholesterol.
The third reason we should cut down on eating out is students are losing the fine art of cooking. With more and more young people going to college and getting careers, I’ve found that the kitchen gets used less and less. My grandmother is the only one that really “cooks” anymore. My family resorted to the microwave a long time ago. Heating up a bowl of soup or making a sandwich doesn’t really qualify as “using the kitchen.”
But cookbooks go untouched in most students’ apartments, kitchens are used to store junk mail and the city of Starkville makes a killing on the restaurant tax. Such is the existence of the modern college student.
JanaZ Hatcher is a junior political science and psychology major