College Campus Eating

Hey whats up? I know it's been a while but while i've been away I have been busy looking at different college campuses and when I was there I checked out the different food options to help you guys eat the healthiest foods on your campus. 

So I visited Miami of Ohio in Oxford Ohio, Purdue in West Lafayette Indiana and ate in their dininng halls. I noticed that most colleges have a salad, fruit, and bar, a sandwhich section, some sort of stir-fry, a grill section, some sort of mexican section and italian section, and then snack and drink and dessert sections. So I will give you some picks and passes for items in each section.

The Grill:

Pick: A grilled chicken sandwhich, on wheat/whole grain bread or a wheat bun.

Pass: Stay away from the chicken nuggets (usually only 6 nuggets, without any of the sauces (which are high in cals) racks up about 300 calories). 

The Wok/stir-fry section:

Almost anything you get from this section is going to be pretty healthy it almost always has no fat, just be sure to stay away from (or only put a little) of the sauces on your meal because those are usually very high in sodium and calories. 

Pick: Brown Rice, Green Peppers, sliced mushrooms, sliced onions (all vegetables are good to have in a meal so you can pretty much pick any vegetable you want and you will have a healthy meal.) Shrimp is a good thing to put in your stir-fry. As for sauces or toppings, go for low-sodium soy sauce, or don't get anything. The vegetables and meat should give enough flavor to the meal anyways. 

Pass: White Rice, cheese, Fried Rice, sweet and sour sauce (its almost 60 calories and 9.9 grams of sugar in one serving).

Italian (pasta/pizza)

Pick: Always try to get whole-wheat pasta if possible, rather than the normal white pasta, with marinara sauce topped with some parmesan cheese. 

Pass: normal "white" pasta with Alfredo sauce. As far as pizza goes, there really isn't such a thing as "healthy" pizza but you definitely want to stay away from the BBQ Ranch type pizzas that have a lot of sauces.

Mexican food:

Pick: corn tortillas, steak or carnitas in your tacos or burritos, salsa, a little bit of guacamole, lettuce.

Pass: flour tortillas, sour cream, usually the chicken in these places are high in calories, but that does not go for everywhere.

As you can tell it is very hard to make a general guideline as to what types of foods you should eat and what you shouldnt seeing as every college dining service has different types of foods and cooks them all differently. I would suggest looking on your colleges website for nutritional information because I have found that many college campuses have their own type of nutritional information page. For example, this is Miami of Ohio's nutritional information.