PROJECT 3 FIRST DRAFT

PROJECT 3 FINAL DRAFT

Christina Cattivera

Amanda Lopez

Karishma Mendon

Claire Dirette

WRA 101

Project 3

10 April 2019

Professor Dowell

Word Count- 1,839 words

Nutrition and Mental Health of MSU Freshman

The transition for freshman to college is undoubtedly difficult. So many factors are altered including living in small dorm rooms, not seeing family, heavy workload, and change in food options. Food choices are not the first thing that comes to mind when a freshman takes their first steps on campus but eating home cooked meals to cafeteria food is a considerable change. Michigan State University freshman college students often times find themselves living on their own for the first time and are unsure of how and what to do to maintain a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle directly affects not only physical health but mental health as well including both depression and anxiety.

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When evaluating whether a student is eating correctly for their body and lifestyle there are many factors to consider. According to the pediatricians of the American Academy of Pediatricians, adolescent boys require 2,800 calories a day on average while adolescent girls require about 2,200 calories per day (“A Teenager's Nutritional Needs.”). According to the World Health Organization, the word “adolescent” refers to individuals between the ages of 10 and 19, a range most college freshmen fit into (World Health Organization). For many adolescents, hunger starts to decline once they stop growing, excluding above average sized adolescents and those who participate in above average amounts of physical activity. Girls tend to stop growing earlier than boys do which means their hunger declines at an earlier stage which oftentimes causes girls to consume about 25% fewer calories than the average boy. Assuming the average boy consumes the necessary 2,800 calories, 25% less equates to 2,100 calories, or below the average needed calorie intake for adolescent girls. This causes many girls to lack vitamins and minerals needed (“A Teenager's Nutritional Needs.”). During adolescence, on average 20% of adult height and 50% of adult weight are attained and a 45% increase in bone mass occurs. As a result of the increased growth during this age range, it is especially important to be meeting nutritional requirements for a person’s particular body size, metabolism, and level of activity (DiMeglio 32).

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When considering diet and nutrition it is also important to consider different, more restrictive diets such as vegetarian and vegan diets. It is commonly believed that those who are vegetarian are often lacking protein, vitamins, and minerals in their diets, but these groups can all easily be obtained by consuming tofu, nuts, seeds, legumes, and grains, all of which can be consumed under a stricter vegan diet as well. One concern brought upon by the vegan diet is the lack of riboflavin and vitamin B12 (DiMeglio 32-33). These particular concerns should be considered before an individual decides to become vegan or vegetarian and should consider what different foods are available to them in order to be able to meet these requirements that some who follow these diets tend to lack.

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At Michigan State University, 40% of students live on campus and the majority of these students are freshmen because freshmen are required to live on campus, with a few exceptions. All of these students living on campus pay for on-campus dining plans (“Michigan State University Student Life”). With this immense number of students, Michigan State Culinary Services has the difficult task of providing them all with food. Michigan State has ten dining

halls spaced across the campus, all serving different food options. The dining options of Akers dining hall The Edge will be predominantly focused on due to the fact a great percent of MSU freshman eat at the cafeteria. The Edge serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week. For breakfast omelets, fresh toast, waffles, bacon, and a small selection of fruit are the stables. For lunch, sandwiches, pizza, chicken, some type of red meat, and salad bar are served every day with a couple of changes like pasta and tacos every once in a while. For dinner, pizza, sandwiches, burgers, and chicken are usually served (“The Edge at Akers”). All these daily items served do not have much nutritional value. The Edge and all dining halls at MSU lack healthy options. The salad bars and the option of one type of fruit, usually cantaloupe, are the only choices students have to get their two cups of fruit and three cups of vegetables a day. There is no question why college students do not have a balanced diet because it is not readily available.

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Furthermore, the place Michigan State University gets its food can be considered a problem. The university gets most of their food, like fruit, shipped in from Sysco Grand Rapids. Sysco Grand Rapids is a food distributing company that distributes frozen food products to around 375 different locations, with Michigan State University being one of them (“About Us”). Students, therefore, eat frozen food daily, which have high levels of sodium, saturated fat, and calories (“The Pros and Cons of Frozen Food”). According to Michelle Keller, one of Michigan State's Complex Dining Managers, dairy items are purchased through Country Fresh, pork and beef are directly from MSU farms, and the rest of the food procured through MSU Food Stores. Keller adds “We do the best that we can to procure local/regional items in season”. This statement states MSU tries to get the best food they can locally when it is in season. However, with most of the academic school year being in the winter; it can be hard to obtain a wide variety of the correct types of foods locally, like fruits and vegetables. Additionally, Leah Ball who is the communications manager at the MSU culinary services claims “there is unfortunately not a simple answer as to where our food comes from.” She continues by saying MSU has “150 local and 300 regional vendor partnerships with as well as sources located right on campus.” Some partnerships include Hudsonville Ice Cream, Woody’s Oasis, Paramount Coffee, Country Fresh, Breadsmith, MSU Organic Farms, and MSU Dairy Store. MSU tries to get their food locally to cut down on the number of natural resources produced by transportation. Michigan State is a large college campus that serves a lot of people in their dining halls. The university is aware of the benefits of locally grown food and is starting to incorporate these ideas on their dining hall food selections.

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Next year in the fall of 2019, Michigan State University is reconstructing the dining hall at Owen to an allergen-free dining hall. The new dining hall is in the early works but all the food served there will be free from the top eight allergens, sesame, and gluten. The top eight allergens are milk, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, shellfish, fish, wheat, and soybean (“The Big 8”). With these restrictions on what ingredients are in the foods, the culinary services are creating different meals that will suit anyone who has food allergies. The new allergen-free dining hall is a great step in the right direction for Michigan State University by providing students with a wider, healthier variety of food options. However, even with these expected changes, the types of food MSU serves can have negative effects on their students including symptoms of depression.

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The correlation between depression and nutrition is not a newly studied idea. However, this issue seems to be something overlooked by the dining halls at Michigan State University. Many adults and students will laugh at the commonly unappealing food frequently served at dining halls, but the question is: how does poor nutrition affect the mental health of college students? Often times correlation does not mean causation, but with the rates of depression among college students, there must be more than one factor deteriorating their mental health. In fall 2011 college students said: 30.9% felt so depressed it was difficult to function, 50.4% felt overwhelming anxiety, 11.1% were diagnosed with depression, and 7.1% seriously considered suicide (The American College Health Association).

Nutritional psychology is a field of medicine which exists to express the importance of diet in regard to one’s mental health. Dr. Monique Tello says that self-care is just as important as medications and therapy when treating depression. The main three components of self-care are sleep, psychical activity, and most importantly diet. Dr. Tello states that there is evidence that supports that a healthy lifestyle and diet can contribute to preventing diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mental health issues such as dementia, mental health disorder, and diseases such as depression. Alternatively, many could disagree with these claims and argue that depression leads people to have poor nutrition, however, studies show that a healthy diet “is associated with a significantly lower risk of developing depressive symptoms,” (Tello).

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Folate is a b-vitamin needed to make genetic material such as DNA, and it is found naturally in certain foods. Another study by Dr. Jonathan E Alpert shows “Depressive symptoms are the most common neuropsychiatric manifestation of folate deficiency” (Alpert).

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From the given information, it is safe to draw the conclusion that poor nutrition can cause increased rates of depression. Furthermore, because it is common that people experience symptoms of depression college, it is not a stretch to put some blame on the lacking nutritional value in which dining halls provide to college students.

Although poor nutrition may not be the only factor which leads to depression, with “more than 300 million people now living with depression,”, it is not a bad idea to make slight changes that can make big differences (Riba and Cusumano).

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All in all, a solution to this problem is simple and will not drastically affect the cost of food. It is obvious that more vegetarian and vegan options should be available to all students at MSU for a more balanced meal. Along with this, there has to be variety among those options, unlike the current fruit options which normally consist of cantaloupe and honeydew. Seeing as the cafeteria food is mainly available to students with a meal plan, an addition of $30 would be made to all the meal plans being only a 1% increase on each “meal,” being each combo exchange and averaging three meal swipes per day. By doing this, the extra $30 from all the meal plans expenses will fund the cafeteria’s increase in new fruits and vegetables. From there new recipes will be developed by the chefs to include the new variety of food and those recipes will then be added to the menus the dining halls. In addition to that, the MSU student organic farm can also increase their contribution of providing fresh organic vegetables to the dining halls. By doing this, students have the opportunity to eat newly picked fruits and vegetables that have not been overly transported or sprayed with preservatives or pesticides. By serving these new recipes with a variety of fresh vegetables, fruits, etc., student’s mental health is predicted to improve. The addition of these new recipes will bring needed nutrients and minerals to the MSU student’s bodies and minds, which could directly help improve the rate of depression in students.

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Michigan State college freshman experience a lot of changes when moving away from home to the college campus. A way to make the transition a little easier and to reduce the chance a student will get depression is by adding a wider variety of nutritional food options to the dining hall menus.

Works Cited

“A Teenager's Nutritional Needs.” HealthyChildren.org, www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/teen/nutrition/Pages/A-Teenagers-Nutritional-Needs.aspx.

“About Us”. Sysco Grand Rapids, https://sysco.com/Contact/Contact/Our-Locations/Grand-Rapids.

Alpert, Jonathan E. "Nutrition and Depression: the role of folate." Nutrition Reviews, Oxford Academic, May 1997, academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/55/5/145/1813961.

DiMeglio, Giuseppina. “Nutrition in Adolescents.” Pediatrics In Review. vol. 21, no. 1, 2000, pp. 32-33.

Leah, Ball. Personal Interview. Mar 2019.

Michelle, Keller. Personal Interview. Mar 2019.

“Michigan State University Student Life.” U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, www.usnews.com/best-colleges/michigan-state-2290/student-life.

Tello, Monique. Diet and Depression, harvard health publishing, 22 Feb. 2018, www.health.harvard.edu/blog/diet-and-depression-2018022213309.

“The Big-8.” FARRP, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, farrp.unl.edu/informallbig8.

“The Edge at Akers.” The Edge at Akers | Eat at State, 2019, eatatstate.msu.edu/menu/The%20Edge%20at%20Akers/all/2019-03-18.

“The Pros and Cons of Frozen Foods - Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter Article.” Health & Nutrition Letter - Your Guide to Living Healthier Longer, Feb. 2015, www.nutritionletter.tufts.edu/issues/10_14/current-articles/The-Pros-and-Cons-of-Frozen-Foods_1646-1.html.

Riba, Erica, and Diana Cusumano. "Depression Among College Students." Calvin.edu, Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Nov. 2018, adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/depression-among-college-students.

“World Health Organization, Adolescent Health and Development.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 13 July 2017, www.searo.who.int/entity/child_adolescent/topics/adolescent_health/en/.