Unlike Cookie Monster, who has gorged on cookies since 1969 and has maintained a svelte figure, freshmen who have binged on pizza and alcohol for a mere eight months may have gone from svelte to stocky. In response to the alarming increase of childhood obesity, the producers of \Sesame Street"" recently announced a diet makeover for Cookie Monster to encourage children to develop healthy eating habits at a young age.
""Sesame Street's"" nutritional campaign may help reverse the rise in childhood obesity for today's tots by teaching the difference between ""sometimes"" and ""always"" foods, but many college students could also benefit from this lesson. To ensure a healthy and balanced diet, students and the university share a dual responsibility to make and provide healthy food choices.
According to a recent report by The New England Journal of Medicine, the life expectancy of America's youth may decline by as many as five years as a result of childhood obesity. Easy access to copious amounts of pizza and beer may provide students with adequate nutrition for survival, but the long-term impacts of this type of diet may lead to obesity and several associated diseases and complications, including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure and cancer. If students do not balance their diet to combat obesity, these risks and complications will likely develop at younger ages.
To facilitate healthy diets, the Division of University Housing attempts to prepare healthy foods that meet the various dietary needs of all students. Assistant Food Service Director Joe Elliott explained, ""In our cafeterias, there are certain parameters that the menu follows so that it always includes a healthy choice, a vegetarian entr??e, and a certain number of soups and desserts.""
""We try to provide a variety of options so that students can always make a healthy choice,"" Elliott said.
On the other had, the menu of the food delivery service, which offers pizza, breadsticks, nachos, chicken wings, pop and artificial juices, reads like a manual for obesity. The menu lacks fruits and vegetables (with the exception of whatever lies beneath the gooey cheese of 'nachos plus') and Cookie Monster would likely name all menu items as ""sometimes"" foods. Clearly, the university's attempt to provide healthy choices is curtailed by the highly caloric (albeit tasty), cheap and convenient options offered by the housing food delivery service.
Still, students have the ultimate responsibility to make healthy diet choices and the university faces limitations on its ability to ensure good nutrition. Before placing an online order for pizza with a side of breadsticks and a Coke, students should consider the nutritional depreciation that their bodies undergo as they lazily await thousands of empty calories while watching MTV on a slouched futon.
Students should also consider the alternatives the cafeterias offer and avoid indulging in mindless snacking while watching television or doing homework-recommendations endorsed by the university. If students do not take personal responsibility to fight the freshmen 15, they can expect shorter lives ridden with serious health risks.
Students who decry Cookie Monster's new diet as unnecessary should step on the scale and evaluate whether their freshman 15 resulted from an irrepressible desire to binge like a Muppet or a lack of responsible eating behaviors. Either way, students with expanding waistlines could stand to learn responsible nutrition from their favorite blue monster. Students should reevaluate their diets and the university should revise their delivery menu to ensure that five years of healthy eating at college will not result in a life span shortened by five years.
