Food for students: Are You
Getting What You Need?
Wouldn’t it be great if there was something you could take to improve
your memory, alertness, and overall energy? You’re in luck! It does
exist, and doesn’t require a prescription. Healthy eating can make the
difference between coping with student life and struggling to keep up.
It’s easy enough to look up how much vitamin C or calcium you should get each day. It is
also easy to read the back of a vitamin bottle to see just how much of a given vitamin or
mineral the product provides. But how can you tell if what you eat — which should be your
primary source of important nutrients — is giving you what you need?
One way is to focus on the big picture: eat a balanced diet that contains a variety of
colourful fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, dairy products, seafood, lean
meats, and poultry. Focus on nutrient-dense foods like these, which are packed with
vitamins and minerals relative to the number of calories they deliver, and you should be
fine.
 Most students have a limited budget, and don’t have a lot of time to cook. Healthy
eating doesn’t require wads of cash. Here are some tips to get the most for your
money:
 Avoid impulse buying. Plan your meals for the week, make a shopping list, and stick
to it.
 Don’t shop when you are hungry, and try to avoid the middle aisles of the
supermarket. Most of the non-essential items are located there.
 Buy in bulk. Get together with your friends to take advantage of cheaper prices for
large quantities.
 Bring your lunch. You can make healthy lunches for far less than you would pay on
campus.
To really optimize your diet, keep these two additional tips in mind.
1. Limit liquid sugars. Soft drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, and other sugarsweetened beverages can deliver up to 12 teaspoons of sugar in a single serving, with
no other useful nutrients. These beverages offer no health or nutritional benefits.
Worse, regular consumption of these drinks can increase your chances of becoming
obese or developing diabetes — both of which raise your risk for heart disease and
other chronic conditions. Unsweetened coffee or tea or sparkling water are better
choices. Also, recent research has shown that artificial sweeteners can be just as bad
as sugar, if not worse. Just one artificially sweetened beverage a day can raise your
risk of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and metabolic syndrome.
2. Cut back on refined carbohydrates. White bread, many breakfast cereals, packaged
snack foods, and crisps and chips deliver mainly pure starch — which the body
quickly converts to sugar — with few other nutrients or fibre. Better choices are
whole grains, breads made with whole grains, high-fibre breakfast cereals, brown
rice, steel-cut oats, fruits and vegetables, and beans. A good general rule is to choose
foods that have at least one gram of fibre for every 10 grams of carbohydrate. Even
better, aim for a gram of fibre for every 5 grams of carbohydrate.
Health Promotion Service, Student Services, NUI Galway
Source: Harvard Medical School http://www.health.harvard.edu