by James Chung
Whenever someone mentions college, everybody can agree that all college students will more or less have a social life during the tenure of their education. While socializing and networking are important to making friends and connections respectively, it's also equally as important to take care of their bodies by maintaining a healthy diet and regular exercise. Effectively, students should be able to eat healthy and get healthy amounts of sleep during the semester, but that is not true in reality for most cases. Although it is an incredibly sad reality that many students are not able to maintain a healthy diet while studying, we can draw great conclusions about the current trends of how students' social lives affect their health via their diets.
Social Relationships And Eating Behaviors
It may not readily apparent, but students will naturally be affected by the people around them in terms of their diets and exercise habits. A research article published in BMC Public Health looks goes over students' perceived influence on their diets and physical activity behaviors. It was found that significant others were the most influential matter for these behaviors, but was followed second by family and later by college/high school friends (Harmon et al. 8). While very viable information for reference, it was also noted that other factors such as distance from home and type of behavior should be noted when extrapolating and inferring the current behaviors of students in those aspects (Harmon et al. 9). It is notable that these social networks had a smaller effect on physical activity behaviors compared to the eating habits of students (Harmon et al. 4).
The Implications Of The Effects Of These Social Networks
The previous article had mentioned that the study was also intended to look for ways for obesity intervention amongst college students. With this in mind, we could look towards employing social interventions for college students when it comes to their eating habits and their exercise behaviors. There could have been an issue with the data resulting from Hawaii students and non-Hawaii students, but the researchers found that there was no significant difference regarding eating habits, helping these results with their generalization for other college students (Harmon et al. 4).
There was a statistically significant difference when it came to the perceptions of influence from high school friends between the Hawaii and non-Hawaii students, however (Harmon et al. 4). Hawaii students regarded their high school friends with a higher influence than their counterparts, but perceived influence for physical activity was lower than eating habits generally for both parties (Harmon et al. 4). Students could still feel the influence of more-fit sources from their social network, which could urge them to improve their exercise behaviors, but significant others remained to have the highest amount of influence in this regard (Harmon et al. 5).
How Field Of Study Affects Snacking Habits
Although field of study is not directly connected to the social networks of various college students, we could infer that the people we meet on the daily basis and the actual material we study could have an effect on how we eat throughout the day, affecting our overall diet as students. An article in Journal of Obesity begged the question: "Do students who study health-related fields eat healthier than students of other fields?". From the study, the researchers found that students who studied health related fields ate more healthy snacks when off campus, but healthy snacks were consumed in a lower proportion overall both all types of students at both locations. (McArthur et al. 9). While nearly a third of the data was presented from students who were overweight/obese, the difference was not statistically significant enough to affect the reached conclusion effectively.
In terms of quality of snacks consumed, health related students felt that they consumed more unhealthy snacks overall compared to other students who were in other fields (McArthur et al. 5). Although there was a difference in perceptions on that topic, both types of students understood that their current snacking habits would actually affect their physical health later down the road (McArthur et al. 5). Additionally, students felt unable to self-direct when it came to healthy snacks when experiencing negative emotions but more comfortable in situations where either healthy food was inaccessible or in a positive situation (McArthur et al. 5).
What We Can Understand From This
While it would seem that health-related students ate a bit more healthier than students in other fields and were a bit more conscious of their eating habits, students overall felt that their consumption of food was a bit more biased towards the unhealthier side. One of the more surprising facts about the study was that about a third of the participants from health-related studies were overweight/obese. Although the statistic is surprising, the metric used to determine that status of their weight may not take into account other factors such as physical activity level and genetics, which still play a part in physical health. Another important factor is the inaccessible nature of healthy food on campus for students overall, which brings up the question of whether the blame is completely on students for their snacking behaviors.
The researchers of the study have mentioned that these results indicate that nutrition education as well as making healthy food more accessible would be the next step to reducing obesity amongst college students (McArthur et al. 9). As a student myself, it feels a bit criminal to have a bit of healthy food scarcity and not being able to take care of my health as well as I would wish to do so. Many of the students in the study have expressed their concerns of their current snacking habits. From this, we could only see that they would really benefit from a little bit of extra education about what they put in their bodies.
Conclusions
We can assume that social life can play a part in how students practice their eating and exercise behaviors but is not the final cause for health issues, such as obesity. While college students are in a pivotal stage of the lives where they can control a lot of things about their lives, there are some elements that are out of their control, which can lead them to make decisions that affect their physical health negatively. For social networks, students tend to take influence a fair bit from their intimate or familial relationships, which can either positively or negatively affect their eating habits. With this in mind, interventions could be placed efficiently as a counter-measure against obesity. To help fight against obesity amongst college students as well, colleges and universities should be looking towards making these healthier options more accessible to students on campus so that they may have more a choice of what they put into their bodies. To aide in the decision making of these students, it would also help students if they were educated more about nutrition as a whole since a good amount of them expressed that they were ensure what they should be looking for.
Obesity isn't a terrible ailment that plagues a majority of college students in the current age, but if we can get some help on making the right decisions for our bodies during this stage of life, our physical health can only benefit and be proliferated from here on out.
References
Harmon, B. E., Forthofer, M., Bantum, E. O., & Nigg, C. R. (2016). Perceived influence and college students' diet and physical activity behaviors: An examination of ego-centric social networks. BMC Public Health, 16(1), 473. doi:10.1186/s12889-016-3166-y
McArthur, L. H., Holbert, D., & Forsythe, W. (2012). Is field of study or location associated with college students' snacking patterns? Journal of Obesity, 2012, 297195-10. doi:10.1155/2012/297195
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