Incoming Villa Julie College freshman Greg Phillips is going to miss his mom's sauteed zucchini and her chicken in cream of mushroom soup topped with bread crumbs. He'll salivate thinking about his dad's steak and salmon.
"It'll be a rude awakening when I go to college," he says.
The Severna Park 18-year-old is among the 190 freshmen who will move into Villa Julie's off-campus apartments next week. Each apartment, shared among four students, comes with a fully equipped kitchen, but Phillips doesn't expect to be doing much cooking.
Adjusting to new people and classes will eat up his hours, increasing the chances that all-night study sessions, lack of regular exercise and too many calls to the local pizza place will result in the "freshman 15" - the weight gain encountered by many first-year college students.
Most dorms don't come with much more than a microwave and a bare-bones common-area kitchen. But college dining halls offer all-you-can-eat buffets dotted with temptation islands of hot dogs, hamburgers and fries, as well as salad bars and ethnic cuisine. The wide range of choices appeals to varied appetites and palates; it also offers temptations.
"What we find with many freshmen, even my athletes, is that they are misinformed," says Roxanne Moore, the Baltimore spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association who also works as a sports nutritionist at Towson University. The No. 1 problem, she says, is gauging portion sizes. Kids "overestimate the calories they burn in sports and overdo their portions."
Moore says the "freshman 15" is no exaggeration. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has studies that show an increase in obesity among 18-year-olds to 29-year-olds from 7.1 percent in 1991 to 12.1 percent in 1999.
"If they are not able to get to the dining hall and they're not educated [about good nutrition], then yes, they'll go for whatever's convenient - fast food," says Moore.
But even at McDonald's, students can exercise some healthy restraint - a single order of hamburger and fries is better than a supersized meal.
Incorporating healthier habits is something Moore says happens over time. "Once college students start to get settled into a pattern and become more familiar with their environment, they can devote more time to eating right and exercise."
