NC State students find themselves facing a glut of choices when deciding what to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Each meal plan provides some sort of access to campus dining halls, which offer rotating, buffet-style courses all week long. Over a dozen restaurants are spread across Talley Student Union, the Atrium and the Oval.

With this many options, it is hard enough for a student to pick where to eat, let alone decide what to eat. This poses a problem for the student hoping to grow not just mentally, but also physically during their time with the Wolfpack. While the college does provide many fitness resources to students in the form of a multi-million dollar gymnasium, exercise only makes up half of the modern fitness equation.

Picking amongst the thousands of meal options available to create the perfect diet is a daunting task; however, the campus does provide a series of lesser known resources to help students create a meal plan within a meal plan specific to an individual’s health needs.  

Olivia Chadwick, an allergen specialist for NC State Dining, said that this process is actually easier than ever thanks to a robust nutrition database. The database, located on the NC State Dining website, allows users to search by location for any food offered on NC State’s campus and examine its nutritional information.

“Three times a day, one of our nutrition specialist employees will refresh it for each meal and each item,” Chadwick said. “We try to make it really transparent so that everyone knows exactly goes into our food.”

Using this database, dietitians in training can examine any item served on NC State’s campus for all sorts of health benefits and detriments. For instance, a cheeseburger at Tuffy’s Diner in Talley Student Union is 691.1 calories and contains 40.3 grams of protein, 13.6 grams of saturated fat and 1393.8 milligrams of sodium.

This information is painstakingly categorized by a team of “dining diplomats” who are usually nutrition undergraduates, according to Chadwick. The database also includes nutritional information for third-party campus partners found on NC State like Chick-fil-A and Starbucks.

Jillian Schoening, a Meredith College dietetic intern working with NC State Dining, said that this information is served to NC State students in more ways than one.

“If they use the MyFitnessPal app, all of the items at NC State are already programmed in,” Schoening said. “They just have to click on it and all the information is there.”

While this tool is very powerful, having all of the nutritional information available for what you eat and knowing what to do with it are two very different things.

For students who mostly eat in Fountain, Clark and Case Dining Halls, the “dietitian’s dish” tool offers a good template for healthy eating. The dietitian’s dish, as the name suggests, is a meal plan created by Lisa Eberhart, one of NC State’s three dietitians. These meals are all based on what is available on a given day in the dining halls.

“Every single day, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, we create a healthy meal based on the service menu looking forward and picking out all five food groups for every single meal,” Chadwick said. “You don’t have to follow it exactly, but it’s a really good to use as a template to figure out how to eat healthy if you have no clue.”

The updating guideline is also available on the Campus Dining website. For students who want a more specific plan based on their individual needs, every student is allowed two free meetings with one of NC State’s registered dietitians each academic year.

Also available to students is a new wellness coaching program that only began this semester. The program pairs students with coaches who assist with setting and maintaining various health goals, including nutrition and weight management.

“We help students set goals and achieve their goals — anything related to nutrition, time management, sleep, managing your emotions,” said Alexis Steptoe, the wellness coordinator for University Recreation. “All of those things fall under the wellness umbrella.”

Students meet with coaches one-on-one weekly to discuss the successes and setbacks they experience in relation to their goals. Steptoe said the program is less about going to the gym with students and more about building a participant’s resilience.

“We check in,” Steptoe said. “‘Were you successful? Were you not successful? What happened and how can we help you find something that might be a better fit for you?’”

Steptoe said the new program is a replacement for a program called “#COMMIT,” which also paired students with wellness coaches, but charged $60 for the eight-week program.

“Most everybody wants to live a happier, healthier, less stressed life,” Steptoe said. “We didn’t think that it would be wise to limit it to just those who could afford that fee. Now it’s a totally free service and any student can go on our website and book an appointment.”

Meeting with campus dietitians and wellness coaches and utilizing online guidelines are all great starts to a healthier lifestyle. One other resource provided by NC State offers students a skill they can take with them away from college: cooking.

Multiple times a month, NC State Dining hosts cooking demos based around a variety of topics such as international cooking, allergy-free dishes, and vegan and vegetarian options. These demonstrations are hosted by university chefs and are available to both students and staff for free.

“Dining would get the chefs and get the ingredients and plan the event,” Chadwick said. “It’s based on what our chefs do. They pick some recipes and then we design the menu cart to hand out to participants.”

Chadwick said these events are hosted all over campus in locations like 1887 Bistro. Future events can be found on the NC State dining events page. These lessons can be easily applied to low-carb or high-protein diets.

With these tools and resources, planning a healthier food schedule becomes — if not easy — possible for the average student.