March was National Nutrition Month in the US, the latest in a decades-long campaign to improve eating habits. This year鈥檚 theme was 鈥溾��, highlighting how food gets from farms to markets to our plates, how we might store and treat food safely at home and how we can reduce food waste.
Though these are important topics, such education must happen more often if it is to help curb a worsening chronic illness crisis. Nearly half of US adults will be obese in 2030. Obesity the risk of over 200 other conditions, from arthritis to breast cancer. Yet a noted that half of young people in the US have poor-quality diets; so do many college-educated adults. found that most people in the US overestimate their diet鈥檚 quality. , I have noticed that long-term solutions to this crisis seem like an afterthought, with schools and universities neglecting to educate young people about nutrition.
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We college students know so well what to expect from our first year in the dining halls that the phenomenon has a name, the 鈥渇reshman 15鈥�, poking fun at how students gain around 15 pounds in their first year of study, than is seen in the general population. At my college, the University of Chicago, I have certainly seen some of my peers load their plates with only burgers, fries and pizza, wolfing them down in their rush to attend afternoon classes. But it isn鈥檛 necessarily their intention to eat unhealthily.
My college is like many others. It doesn鈥檛 spend resources to offer nutrition as a major or have a department focusing on the topic. Nor do we get comprehensive healthy eating guidance at the dining hall 鈥� it simply claims it offers healthy food, with pictures of fruit and vegetables on posters, and informs us about ingredients. We do have dieticians, but few of my peers know they exist, let alone consult them. At the resident halls where we learn about maintaining our health and well-being at college, I have noticed little nutrition education beyond a PowerPoint slide during orientation of new students. Perhaps universities don鈥檛 want to bore us with something they believe we have already learned.
But that is far from the case. Our parents鈥� dietary habits , if not determine, our own, and we know that many young people are stuck with how little their parents know about nutrition. The current education system tries to solve the problem, though only on paper. US schools for children up to the age of 18 participate in the , which means they are legally required to have nutrition education policies, such as limiting social events that serve unhealthy foods, surveying students and parents to determine appealing and healthy choices and involving parents in nutrition workshops. Yet the policies鈥� inconsistent execution.
Colleges could help by using their status as research institutions to keep students up to date on the nutrition field. They could show us how scientists think about nutrition 鈥� asking us to evaluate our diets based on what our own bodies need, for example, something one course at my college teaches, though it isn鈥檛 mandatory. Such courses could teach us how to think, rather than what to think, about nutrition. They could also offer like cooking and gardening. Ideally, we could then take these lessons home to our parents.
The biggest challenge here is the prevailing attitude towards nutrition. Changing this requires long-term commitment, because the effects of healthier eating among the public take decades to manifest. Education can help fix this attitude. But if our schools and research institutions continue disregarding nutrition, so will all those who follow their example.
Aman Majmudar is at the聽University of Chicago, Illinois. His BA thesis is聽about reforming US food聽additive regulation
