My Eaters Manifesto

Early classes are the bane of college students.  Waking up early to go to classes is difficult for everyone.  To get some extra shuteye many people will skip breakfast.  In order to get more work done some people opt to skip lunch and dinner.  In a world where you hear about people who are trying to find the perfect healthy diet it is surprising that people would choose this route.  Even if you are eating a healthy balanced diet you need to eat the standard three meals per day.  Eating three meals per day is one of my most important core food vales.  I never really noticed how important this was for me until I began to write this paper.  While trying to come up with a topic for this paper I noticed that a few people were not eating three meals per day.  These meals were being replaced by snacks and meals at irregular times.  This made me ask why people would skip meals if they are trying to eat a healthy diet.   

At first I just wanted to double check that it is true that meals, mainly breakfast, are skipped as much as I had noticed it is.  In a more thorough search of the food journals I found that the majority of people do not eat a full breakfast at least once in the three day period.  To double check that this wasn’t an isolated occurrence here at DU I found a study that supported this.   A study from California State University, Chico on college aged students showed that, “thirty-three percent of the survey population reported that they consumed breakfast ‘never’ or ‘seldom’.”  That means that one of every three people doesn’t eat breakfast.  In a time where people are trying to eat healthy diets that number is alarmingly high. 

After thinking about it for a while I came to the question, could it be that breakfast isn’t needed to have a healthy diet? A simple answer is No.  Breakfast is needed if you want to live a healthy lifestyle.  By skipping breakfast you are exposing yourself to unhealthy conditions.  The time between dinner and breakfast is already long.  If you skip breakfast your, “blood sugar levels remain low in the morning causing tiredness, lethargy, lack of concentration, irritability, poor performance in the workplace and an increased tendency to make mistakes or have an accident.” (Heerden)  This is not the only problem with skipping breakfast.  Without breakfast your scholastic performance can decline, you tend to snack more causing weight gain, and you miss out on obtaining vitamins and minerals that you need from breakfast. (Heerden)  These drawbacks from skipping breakfast aren’t something to scoff at.  One of the drawbacks is a poor academic performance and as college students I feel that this single purpose would encourage people to wake up a little earlier to get breakfast. 

                Seeing that skipping breakfast can have such negative health effects I wonder if the same problems can be found by not eating three meals per day.  A study was done to answer this question.   The study focused on middle aged (40-50 years old) men and women.  The study lasted six months.  In this six month period there was two eight week segments where the participants would either eat three meals a day, as a control, or 1 meal per day.  There was an eleven week period that separated the two eight week segments where the subjects were allowed to resume their normal diets.  The nutritional levels were balanced so that the people eating three meals a day would be eating as much as the people who ate only one meal per day.  Simply put, the people who ate only one meal per day ate enough food in that one meal to equal the three meals that the other subjects ate.

                This study concluded that overall it was unhealthy to eat only one large meal per day.  The subjects eating only one meal per day experienced a, “significant reduction of fat mass and significant increases in levels of total, low-density lipoprotein, and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol.” (Carlson, Olga, et al.)  To clarify, high density lipoproteins are good for you.  These proteins act as ball bearings in your blood that break up any clots or blockages in your blood stream.  Low density lipoproteins are the bad type of blood soluble proteins.  Because of the low density they are able to lodge themselves in your bloodstream and possibly cause a blockage.  When you have too much low density lipoproteins in your blood a large blockage can form possibly causing a stroke, fatal blood clots, and other detrimental health problems. 

Furthermore in this study there was also an increased sensitivity to insulin in the one meal per day subjects. This caused the participants to have an, “improved cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk profiles.” (Carlson, Olga, et al.)  This shows that there are major health consequences if you skip meals and do not have a regular eating schedule.  Why is it that the health conscious people will skip meals with health risks as real and dangerous as diabetes and heart problems? 

                A possible explanation for this is the increasing need for people to be efficient with their time.  This need for efficiency is caused by two things; technology and capitalism.  Advanced technology makes it so that right now you can pick up a phone in Denver, dial a number, and in a few seconds be talking to your friend in London.  You can hop on a plane in Denver and be talking face to face with that same friend in a little over nine hours.  The internet allows instant access to the largest database ever created by mankind.  Capitalism is set up where the best and hardest workers will achieve the most.  How does this relate to being efficient with time?  The combination of the speed that everything gets done and the need to outdo competitors means that taking a break to eat a meal could mean that you will miss out on achieving your goals.  This causes everyone to be as efficient with their time as possible so that they aren’t left in the dust.   

Keeping with this need for efficiency, breakfast is the hardest meal to make fiicienct.  Eggs, breakfast meats, pancakes, and other standard breakfast foods take time to cook.  All of the syrups and sauces that can be added to breakfast foods make it difficult to take it to go.  Because of this there are a lot of snacks that can take the spot of breakfast.  These snacks are generally not healthy and only supply your body with the bare minimum to keep you full until lunch.  For example pop tarts, cold cereals with lots of sugar, and other sugar and carbohydrate rich foods are sold to replace breakfast.  The difficulty of taking breakfast to go combined with the multitude of substitutes makes it the most efficient choice to skip breakfast or to grab something that isn’t healthy. 

Colleges have noticed that students are trying to increase their efficiency.  While college administrators cannot do anything to get you to wake up earlier, they are making it more convenient for you to eat.  College cafeterias are adapting their hours to stay open longer.  For example , “at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, residential restaurants at Fox Hall and South Campus have changed to continuous dining, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday.” (Rosenberg, Janice)  This change is allowing students to be as efficient as possible and still not skip meals.  Because food is available all day students no longer need to combine meals and work.  It is as simple as getting the work out of the way whenever you have time and then as long as it is between the hours of 7am and 8pm food is available.  Even here at DU they started the Late Night Pub for students to grab a late night meal.  While this doesn’t counter the original problem of skipping meals it does help to enable students to eat lunch and dinner.

One could argue here that because the cafeterias are starting to have longer hours it is easier to have an irregular meal routine.  Because of the extended hours of operation students can eat many meals per day without needing to go further than their cafeteria.  This would be the case if students didn’t have scholarly or personal obligations that limit their free time.  We all know that most college students don’t have this luxury.  The extended hours of operation is for students that have classes during regular meal time.  If you have class from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. and if the cafeterias are only open for lunch until two you’re out of luck.  With the extra hours you can get lunch whenever you don’t have class as adjust your other meal times to make it easy to eat the healthy three meals per day. 

Another tactic that cafeterias are using to help students eat meals and be efficient is that food to go is becoming more and more popular.  The increase in popularity of food to go has drawn the attention of the cafeteria workers as well.  Proof of this is in the size of the portions.  The food is perfectly portioned to fit into a to-go box.  The size of the portions helps the workers serve more people.  So in a sense, the cafeterias have become as efficient as possible to cater to the students who are trying to be just as efficient.  The quest for efficiency is changing how people choose to eat their meals as well as how the suppliers of the food choose to serve it.

Skipping any meal during the day will have negative consequences.  If you don’t eat breakfast you will run into the problems that are talked about above.  Skipping lunch can seem easy but by the time dinner rolls around you will probably over eat and this can cause weight gain and other eating problems.  Dinner could be the worst meal to skip.  Assuming you eat dinner around 6:30 p.m. and breakfast at 8 a.m. that means that your body is without food for thirteen and a half hours.  That is a long time for your body to be without food.  Any missed meal on occasion is fine but to have a healthy diet you need to eat three balanced meals per day. 

                Eating a balanced healthy diet is only half of the battle to be healthy.  Eating three meals a day is incredibly important.  That goes for eating the correct amount as well.  When trying to figure out what the best diet that you can be on individually just trust your body.  The best advice that I have ever heard in terms of eating right is from Michael Pollan.  He said, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” (Pollan, Michael)  Eating three meals a day makes it so that you have the opportunity to eat enough vegetables and so that you won’t get the urge to eat too much.  Three meals also helps keep you away from eating unhealthy snacks.  By doing this you can stay away from the health problems such as weight gain, diabetes, and heart problems.  

                Waking up and extra twenty minutes early to get breakfast is difficult.  The same goes for any meal when there are more pressing matters that require your immediate attention.  The main thing that I’ve learned from my research is that I need to make time and avoid skipping meals.  Not only will I be healthier but I will also feel better because of it.  This is why I will continue getting up early to get breakfast and making time so that I can get lunch and dinner as well.    

Works Cited:

Silliman, Kathryn, Kathleen Rodas-Fortier, and Michelle Neyman. "A Survey of Dietary and Exercise Habits and Perceived Barriers to Following a Healthy Lifestyle in a College Population." California Journal of Health Promotion 2.2 (2004): 10-19. Web. 20 May 2012. <http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Survey_of_Diet_and_Exercise_Habits_in_a_College_Population.pdf>.

Heerden. "Breakfast - the Most Frequently Missed Meal." Health24. 9 Feb. 2007. Web. 21 May 2012. <http://www.health24.com/dietnfood/Daily_meals/15-3707-3708,18362.asp>.

Carlson, Olga, Bronwen Martin, Kim S. Stote, Erin Golden, Stuart Maudsley, Samer S. Najjar, Luigi Ferrucci, Donald K. Ingram, Dan L. Longo, William V. Rumpler, David J. Baer, Josephine Egan, and Mark P. Mattson. "Impact of Reduced Meal Frequency without Caloric Restriction on Glucose Regulation in Healthy, Normal-weight Middle-aged Men and WomenImpact of Reduced Meal Frequency without Caloric Restriction on Glucose Regulation in Healthy, Normal-weight Middle-aged Men and Women." Metabolism 56.12 (2007): 1729-734. Web. 14 May 2012. <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026049507002806>.

Rosenberg, Janice. "A Revolution in College Dining." The Boston Globe. 6 Nov. 2005. Web. <http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/11/06/a_revolution_in_college_dining/?page=full>.

Pollan, Michael. Unhappy Meals. 2007. Print.