Coming to college can be a big adjustment. There are lots of changes that we experience, including eating at a dining hall for all of our meals. Making good choices isn’t always easy with endless pizza, fries and dessert calling our name, but it is very possible. We are using Bryant.campusdish.com to guide you through a usual week’s choices by sharing what we think are the good options, and also what you may think is healthy, but should actually avoid.
Breakfast:
Choose-
1) An egg white omelet with vegetables, a ladle of oatmeal with a little brown sugar, and a cup of fruit
2) Hardboiled egg whites and one whole egg, an English muffin with light peanut butter, and an apple
3) Two eggs over easy, two pieces of wheat toast, and a couple slices of turkey bacon
Avoid-
1) Blueberry muffin: 23 grams of sugar and 6 grams of fat.
2) Premade scrambled eggs: only because it is hard to measure how many eggs you are actually eating.
3) Cheeses and meats from the omelet section: high in fat and sodium.
4) Juice: most are not fresh and are very high in sugar.
5) Dried fruit: high in sugar and little nutritional value, choose fresh fruit instead.
Lunch:
Choose-
1) ½ cup of Basmati rice, steamed broccoli and grilled chicken from the salad bar with buffalo sauce.
2) A large fresh salad with malt vinegar as dressing, and a sandwich with wheat bread, turkey, vegetables, and mustard or hummus
3) ½ cup of Couscous, brussel sprouts, ½ cup of cottage cheese, and ham from the salad bar.
4) A turkey burger; get lettuce from the salad bar and use as a wrap with grilled zucchini.
Avoid-
1) Heavy dressings like ranch and mayonnaise (choose vinegar, hot sauce, salsa or mustard).
2) Garlic broccoli orzo: 16 grams of fat.
3) Vanilla and Strawberry yogurt: 66 grams of sugar; that’s equivalent to having 6 sugar cookies!
Dinner:
Chose-
1) The Cajun Roasted Pork Loin and a fresh salad with hummus.
2) Turkey burger with no bun, yellow squash, and a fresh salad topped with chickpeas or black beans and malt vinegar.
3) The grilled turkey, steamed broccoli, and a grilled sweet potato.
Avoid-
1) Sweet potato fries: 13 grams of fat; there are 10 grams of fat in our peperoni pizza!
2) Chicken fried rice: 13 grams of fat and over 900 mg of sodium.
3) Asian sesame chicken salad: 20 grams of fat and 700 mg of sodium.
4) Garden/vegetable burger: over 700 mg of sodium.
Healthy doesn’t have to mean just eating salad! It is actually really simple: eat lean protein sources, complex carbs, and good sources of fat. Stay away from heavy sauces and items that are high in sodium or sugar. Try to stick to whole foods! A good tip is to determine something’s health value is attempting to name every ingredient by looking at it. For example, the ingredients in an apple are? The ingredients in Salmo’s hamburgers are?
In conclusion,
DO YOUR SQUATS.
WEAR RED LIPSTICK.
EAT YOUR VEGETABLES.
AND DON’T LET THE YOGURT FOOL YOU!