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Boyle, Jennifer, Nicole Larose. "The Personal Beliefs, The Environment and College Students' Exercise and Eating Behaviors." American Journal of Health Studies 23.4 (2008) 195-200. Ebsocohost. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. College students are at risk for overweight/obesity. It was hypothesized that better nutrition and physical activity would be related to healthy environmental perceptions and personal beliefs.Sixty-five percent of American adults are overweight. The greatest increases in overweight and obesity occur in persons between 18-29 years of age.Eating habits are also a problem in both the general population as well as among college students. Only 28% of persons over the age of two are meeting daily recommendations for fruit intake and even fewer 3% are meeting daily recommendations for vegetable intake. College students often exceed the recommended daily limit for saturated fat intake. A study by Racette found that more than half the students in their sample reported eating high-fat fried or fast foods at least three times per week.

Earlier studies associated the first year of college with a dramatic increase in body weight, termed the "freshman 15". However, recent studies showed that weight gain might be smaller. The purpose of this review was to evaluate the extent of observed weight/body composition changes, including factors associated with them, among students entering university. Searches were conducted for studies examining weight/body composition changes during freshman semesters. Most studies were not comprehensive in assessing numerous potential causative factors for weight gain. Methods for assessing diet, physical activity, and behavioral factors varied among studies. Weight changes were often not quantified by measures of body composition (lean/fat) to ascertain that changes were limited just to gains in fat mass. Overall, weight changes ranged from 0.7-3.1 kg, but among individuals who gained weight, the range was narrower, 3.1-3.4 kg. There may be specific groups of students with a greater predisposition for weight gain and future research should focus on identifying those groups.

Deshpande, Sameer, Michael Basil and Debra Basil. "Factors Influencing Healthy Eating Habits Among College Students." Health Marketing Scholarly 26.2 (2009) 145-164. Ebsocohost. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. Poor eating habits are an important public health issue that has large health and economic implications. Many food preferences are established early, but because people make more and more independent eating decisions as they move through adolescence, the transition to independent living during the university days is an important event. Numerous studies have shown that college students often have poor eating habits. Students tend to eat fewer fruits and vegetables on a daily basis\nand report high intake of high-fat, high-calorie foods.To study the phenomenon of food selection, the heath belief model was applied to predict the likelihood of healthy eating among university students. Numerous studies have shown that college students often have poor eating habits.

On this opinion page for The New York Times, Stephan Dubner talks about the effects of having mandatory calorie postings for certain restraunts. He believes that because the calorie content is shown, people bought more food.

Rash, CL, et al. "Nutrition-related knowledge, attitude, and dietary intake of college track athletes." Sport Journal 11.1 (2008): 1-8. CINAHL Plus with Full Text. EBSCO. Web. 17 Nov. 2010. This article is about research that was conducted on 113 track athletes from two NCAA Division I schools. Each athlete took a questioner on nutritional knowledge. Thy found that the athletes scored high on carbohydrate, vitamins and minerals, and protein questions, while scoring low on vitamins E and C. Overall the mean diet score was 84 ± 10 (M ± SD) of 110 possible. In addition to this the research also looked at the college athletes died. They found high dietary intake scores in vitamins C and A, cholesterol, saturated fat, calcium, and magnesium. They found low mean dietary intake scores were found for vitamin E, fiber, sodium, and potassium

The food choices students in college make, could set them up for future health problems in the future. Research has shown that food served in dorms are comparable to food served in a fastfood restraunt. Fast food is attracting to college students because of a limited budget, easy access, and peer pressure because their friends are going to eat fastfood as well. Eating fast foods may have little impact on a teen or young adult's health in the short term; but more studies are showing that a poor diet during the teen and childhood years can set a teen up for health problems later '" including type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Fast food may taste good now, but could be more costly later on.