By Kristine Pascual, April 16, 2024
Making time for health is necessary as eating healthy foods leads to improved moods and better focus. Oftentimes, college students are busy with assignments and exams, forgetting to pay any attention to their health. By acknowledging one’s relationship between food and emotions, students are able to cultivate a more balanced, healthy approach in their academic lives at a time of final projects and upcoming exams.
As a college student, staying on top of assignments is necessary but oftentimes physical health and diet suffers from a busy school schedule.
Feeding the stomach also feeds the brain, so eating the proper nutrients and vitamins is necessary for a healthy diet. Nutrition assistant professor Belal Hasan explained that ultimately, there is a connection between one’s gut and their emotions.
“There’s something called the gut-brain axis,” Hasan said. “There’s this connection between the gut directly to the brain and the brain controls the digestive system, so whatever happens in the digestive system is directly transmitted or communicated to the brain.”
Eating foods that contain a lot of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants keeps the stomach full and helps the brain flourish. According to nutrition lecturer Stephanie Jacobo, foods like grapes, berries and nuts are good for the brain and its development especially as a young adult. Eating protein like lean chicken, turkey, beef or any fish is beneficial as well.
With students having packed schedules, finding time to eat can be difficult at times. Nutrition lecturer Gina Crome emphasized the importance of eating.
“It’s better for students specifically if they can eat regularly,” Crome said. “Taking small breaks where they have healthy snacks regularly every few hours will really help their concentration and keep their mood steadier.”
For construction engineering student Jamia Kemp, having snacks is a must to stay focused throughout the school day. Between classes or breaks Kemp will snack on pistachios or seaweed.
“If I eat greasy foods or really heavy foods I won’t feel as good, but when I eat stuff like fruits and vegetables or nuts or even bread it doesn’t really give me the same feeling, I honestly feel better,” Kemp said.
Hasan recommends for students to look into fermented foods for more health benefits. Fermented foods such as kefir, kombucha or pickled vegetables have the ability to reduce heart disease risk and aid digestion, immunity or even weight loss. Along with health benefits, many fermented foods come from cultures outside of the United States. For example, kimchi has gained popularity over the last few years but it originated from Korea.
“If you can give your body a good portion of fermented food like kimchi, which contains life culture, it’s going to be really good and your body will appreciate it,” Hasan said.
Hasan also suggested eating foods like yogurt but to be careful of high sugar and high sodium foods found on grocery shelves. He recommends purchasing from small businesses not only for support, but homemade foods typically have more good bacteria than store-bought foods.
Jacobo recommends meal planning or simply bringing snacks to school. She suggests students can make and bring their own lunches when they know they will be on campus for most of the day.
“Make it a habit to have regular access to fruits and veggies, prepare a sandwich in advance, cut it in half, cut up some apples, do some meal prep before coming to school,” Jacobo said. “Lean beef or salmon or any other fish that you like, chicken or turkey, those kinds of meats can help the body utilize those other nutrients a lot longer, it’ll sustain you while you’re in class.”
Oftentimes students have little time to eat or are too focused and consumed with work that they forget to have a snack or meal. Eating some sort of food is important because the brain cannot focus when it is hungry.
“A lot of times I know people will go hours without eating because they’re studying or doing things that seem more important,” Kemp said. “Eating something is better than eating nothing.”
Though keeping the stomach full is important, being mindful of what is put into the body also matters. When students are stressed, they might tend to overeat.
“Stress eating tends to make people eat things that they don’t want to eat,” Crome said. “People eat things in bigger quantities because they’re not being mindful of what they’re eating since they are too busy being consumed with what they’re worried about.”
Along with Panda Express, CPP offers several other fast food joints like Round Table, Subway, Qdoba and Carl’s Jr. Hasan partly blames the school for only having high sugar, high sodium foods across campus.
“The problem is when you look at our vending machines around campus, most of our snacks are high in fat, high in sugar,” Hasan said.
Along with the campus’ fast food options are several mini convenience stores that sell a majority of unhealthy snacks like chips, candy and ice cream. There are some healthy options as well but are in limited quantities. Students will most likely opt for what they think tastes better but not necessarily what will make them feel better.
“When people snack on things that are really high in sugar it tends to drive blood sugars up very quickly and much like a roller coaster, what comes up will come down and so people tend to crash,” Crome said.
Choosing to eat healthy as a college student sounds near impossible and expensive, but with the right mindset and planning skills it’s possible. Having the right mindset is crucial to recognize certain habits that should be changed.
“Counselors or therapists or friends, they might tell you if that crowd or event or person is causing you stress or they’re negative and not good for you mentally maybe stay away or limit the amount of time you give them, right,” Jacobo said. “Same thing with food. If the foods we are consuming are not making us feel good we should consider cutting back.”
Though eating healthy is important, everyone comes from a different background culturally and each person is different. There is no perfect diet, only what makes sense for each individual.
“My advice is you are the doctor for yourself,” Hasan said. “You are the only one that knows what food really improves their health and what foods make you feel tired. Be careful of artificial flavors, artificial sugars and high sugar content, try to avoid them.”
To learn more about wellness and gut-brain-mood connection, check out the Native Healing Foods Spring Symposium. This free event will be held Thursday, April 18 in Andromeda at the Bronco Student Center.
Feature image courtesy of Dan Gold