How Does The Choice Of Housing Affect College Students’ Food Habits

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How does the choice of Housing Affect College Students’ Food Habits?
Background
Studies on the eating habits among college students have no details on the scope about the housing choices. Majority of college students choose foods based on how they stay within or outside the colleges. In most cases, the students especially those who stay on campuses eat fatty foods, inadequate servings that are rich in nutrients, limited fruits, and green vegetables among others. Therefore, poor nutrition and obesity incidences are some of the current challenges affecting the student in the colleges. Students are usually faced with a variety of predictors of poor eating habits and obesity especially food consumption as a result of housing choice. Students love community living in colleges. The foodstuff environments, as well as eating places, are major contributors to the rise of poor eating habits and the epidemics among the students primarily in United States (Glanz et al. 330). Students who choose to live on campus and hostels have no choice but to eat foods from the dining halls. However, such eating places lack different foods that students may choose to eat. Thus, students may not make the right choice of eating habit such as eating healthy foods that are nutritious. The limitation of food choices in the dining hall becomes their habit health go for the unhealthy food habits. For example, the students only eat the foods provided in the daily meal plan, the students may choose to go and eat out irrespective of their paid house foods, and students may choose to cook hurriedly in microwaves since there are no cooking facilities in the hostels (Glanz et al. 330).
Statement problem
College environments and housing contribute to the poor choices of food habits that are responsible for weight gains. Such impacts are mainly escalated by the lifestyle and socio-economic factors. Chourdakis et al. note that students who reside on-campus and hostels within the institution receive foodstuff that is have saturated fat, sodium, total fat, and cholesterol. Besides, these students have a low intake of foods that have polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, vitamin E, fibers and folate (Chourdakis et al. 383). The reason for such food choices is that the different dining halls in such colleges do not provide healthy food options. Therefore, the choice of housing in colleges affects students’ food habits.
Students who live in colleges begin to express their interests and desire to have healthier food choices and habits. Therefore, most of them leave the limited food choices in colleges and opt to stay outside college environments where they have unlimited choices to food habits. Besides, most students begin to eat away from the residence halls. Separately, other students live near food groceries and stalls to get nutritious foods that they prepare themselves hence before eating (Hagen, Krishna and McFerran 589). Providing foods with limited nutritional values or offering limited food choices in the residence halls could lead to poor food choices among the students who stay within the school. Therefore, students choose to look for alternative housing to ensure that they get the right food...