Cooking in College!

Statistics

These statistics, below, were founded through a survey that was sent out to the students of Cal State San Marcos. We collected 103 responses; the responses were predominantly female, due to the campus being predominantly female.

Insight from Interviews

Interview with Collin Wagstaff

Collin is a first year in college, and plays soccer both for the school and on a semi-professional team. Do to his high amount of activity; food plays a large part in his everyday life. His coaches tell him what he should and should not eat, because of his strict diet where certain times of the year he has to eats more calories, and other times of the year he eats less. He tends to cook chicken and rice as much as he can because it is quick, easy, and relatively healthy. It helps that he lives in an apartment with other soccer players; this makes it easy to stay on track with his diet. However, when he goes out to eat it is mostly for the social aspect, because of this he believes if he wasn’t on the soccer team, or had roommates he would most likely eat out less. Even though he eats out a lot it is usually because he needs to gain weight for soccer, so he himself has not experienced the freshman fifteen but he has seen it happen to his buddies. Collins responses tell us that not all college students experience the freshman 15 and the stereotypical representation of students as junk food, many students actually engage in food making, rule-setting and self-regulation with much energy even if, sometimes, dinner becomes a matter of quick fixes (Blichfeldt, & Gram, 2013).

            For college students money is usually an issue but not for Collin. He has been blessed with not having to worry about money or budgeting for most of his life, his family still helps him out when needed. But, is now starting to realize he spends a good amount of money on groceries, and eating out, he is taking notice into how much he needs to start taking charge of his own financial.

Interview with Alyana Booker 

            Alyana Booker is involved in Greek Life at CSUSM. Alyana is vegetarian so her diet isn’t strict as to how she eats, but strict to what she eats. Her favorite food is pasta, and according to “University Caterers Organisation’s 2018 report on eating habits found the most popular food was still pasta” (Cloake, 2018). Even though she says that Greek life, doesn’t affect her eating habits, she makes it clear that there is no time for her to cook. She does try to cook at least every other day, but it isn’t anything special, mainly pasta because it is easy. “The main challenge seems to be to get into the habit of cooking on an everyday basis” (Blichfeldt, & Gram, 2013). Alyana tends to go out about three times a week, and mainly eats out for the social aspect of it. She does admit that she is a picky eater but really wants to change her eating habits to make more healthy choices.

            As for money, Alyana doesn’t worry about it too much because she gets help from her parents; because of this she doesn’t budget, she doesn’t have a job, so she doesn’t feel the need to budget. However, she is starting to notice how much things are costing, and realizes she needs to get a job to understand the value of money.