The life of a student is like a roller coaster ride, just for a longer period, where pulls and jerks are in terms of performance (grades, internships etc.). It is a very demanding life in terms of time and efforts. Unfortunately, such a stressful life often takes a toll on the health of students. One of the major reasons for this is the compromise students make with their dietary habits, especially the timing and the type of their food.

In formative years, it is important to maintain the proper diet which is balanced in terms of nutrients like vitamins and proteins, for students to grow and evolve into well-functioning individuals. This also includes prevention of onset of chronic diseases like diabetes at an early age. Unfortunately, this is not the case with a lot of college students.

This problem can be attributed to two causes: a lack of a proper diet and improper timing of food intake.

Many students do not pay attention to the quality of their food and eat only for the sake of satiating their hunger. While in the short run this sure is tempting and arguably advisable when the time is scarce (e.g. an approaching deadline), this is harmful to the body in the long run. It is like a double-edged sword: if you engage in this practice for extended periods of time, not only do you miss on the important nutrients, you also ingest harmful chemicals which may be toxic. Hence, as far as possible, we should try to eat food with acceptable quality.

There is a simple measure of how to deal with this situation. An adolescent male needs 2800 calories in a day, and an adolescent female needs 2200 calories in a day. Try this experiment: for a two-week period, try to keep track of the number of calories you ingest every day and calculate their average. Is this average somewhere near the stipulated intake? If not, where are you missing? Please also count for the calories you burn daily.

The second issue is the lack of dietary discipline. Due to frequent deadlines and a stressful life, people often ignore the timing of their food. For example, a lot of students skip breakfast. But this practice is not salubrious for the body. Breakfast kick starts your metabolism and helps burn calories throughout the day.

Ask this to yourself: How many times have you foregone your meals? And how frequently do you engage in this practice? If you take proper meals (lunch, dinner, breakfast) during the day, great. But if you don’t, it is disadvantageous for your body. Your intake of the nutrients essential for proper physiological functioning drops, you may get sick or feel weaker during your daily work. On the other hand, your body may respond erratically to frequent changes in the dietary discipline.

One way to deal with this is by taking a small amount of meals at regular intervals. In this way, you won’t spend a lot of time cooking or eating, and you would continue to ingest requisite nutrients. Essential nutrients are needed by the body, and you can make sure that you take them in the amount required.

For this approach, you can rely on the university. The university student health services offer their aid to deal with issues related to the diet of students. Specifically, you could ask a dietician about your dietary problems, restrictions, and possibility of improvement. I suggest utilizing the resources offered by the university.

Proper diet and dietary discipline are essential for physiological growth and development and leads to a healthy life. Compromise with either the diet or dietary discipline leads to chronic health problems in the long run and as far as possible, in the most formative years, students should try to maintain as healthy a diet as possible.