Students should have access to nutrition facts and ingredient lists for the food they eat on campus—two things that are currently either unavailable or difficult to come by.
The University’s reasoning behind not providing nutritional information at campus dining locations is that it can encourage calorie counting, exacerbate eating disorders and hamper healthy eating habits by taking the focus away from on overall balanced diet and placing it on numbers.
These are reasonable concerns, and we applaud the University’s commitment to creating a culture of healthy habits on campus. We are also encouraged by the upcoming programs which will promote healthy eating without using nutrition facts.
That being said, we believe that having nutritional information available to students is a necessary step in creating healthy habits on campus. These facts do not need to be overwhelming—we are not advocating listing calories and grams of fat on menus—but they should be accessibly for students who are concerned with what they are eating.
Having pamphlets unobtrusively placed in the dining locations or online would make them available to interested students without forcing them upon anyone.
It is important to know what you are putting in your body. It is especially important for students who are essentially living on their own for the first time. Many students may have grown up having well-balanced lunches packed for them every day and would come home to a healthy, home-cooked meal at night. Now that students no longer have their parents dictating the majority of their eating, they must learn to develop their own healthy eating habits. It is impossible to make the right choices, however, if you are unaware of what the right choices are.
Since students might not have the background to know what foods are healthy and what foods only appear to be healthy, having nutrition facts available is necessary.
The availability of ingredient lists is perhaps even more important. For students with food allergies, it is necessary that they know what is in the foods they are eating. Although it is currently possible for students in this situation to obtain the complete ingredient lists, they must jump through hoops to do so.
It would be much more convenient and safer for students with allergies if the ingredients were easily accessible in the dining locations along with the nutrition facts.
The University is right in saying that nutrition facts alone should not guide someone’s eating, especially since nutrition facts are not always entirely accurate. Nutrition facts, however, are one important aspect of eating a balanced diet. The University should make nutritional information available and should then allow students, as young adults, to make their own eating decisions.
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