<p>Hello, :)
Well recently the atmosphere at my house has been all about college and universities, mostly because my sister is a college student (soon to move away) and I'm a senior in HS. Since the day of moving to the dorms it's coming up, well she always says she won't have time to eat a good meal and she will have to eat canned food or instant food. So I began wondering a silly question: what do college students eat as in an everyday basis? do they ever eat homemade food? or is it always always prepared food? And How much do you spend on it monthly or so?</p>
<p>It sounds really silly, but I had the curiosity to ask people who are experiencing the college life. ;)</p>
<p>Typically you’ll have dining hall food for your major meals…the quality of this food really varies from school to school. If you can afford to you’ll probably want to go out fairly frequently as well, and your budget will dictate the quality of restaurants that you decide to go to.</p>
<p>Personally, I was fortunate enough to live in buildings that had great dining halls for my first two years of school. I would still head out to the grocery store quite frequently though to get chips, easymac, hot pockets, pizza rolls, drinks, and the essentials for dorm living. I was on a budget of roughly $500/month at school and I’d say about 60% of it went to beer, 30% went to food and the rest went to miscellaneous expenses. Cost varies from person to person though depending on your priorities.</p>
<p>Typically dining hall food, which fortunately was pretty good at my school, or the occasional dinner out with friends. Delivery is common–pizza, subs, chinese, cheese balls, anything that a place will deliver.</p>
<p>As far as quick food…Banquet/Lean Cuisine meals, those mac & cheese and hamburger helper microwavable packets, leftovers, lunchables, pop tarts, etc.</p>
<p>Most of the time I ate in the dining halls, and I could get nearly anything from them (the school I go to is consistently top 3 in the country in food services.) </p>
<p>If I made food it was usually either pasta, which is really easy to make, or something frozen and microwavable. Now that I’m in an apartment with a kitchen I cook a lot more. I still make a lot of pasta, but I also make chicken, steak, potatoes, stuff like that.</p>
<p>One of the deciding factors is if the student lives on or off campus. I live off campus and I always eat homemade meals, dine at restaurants, and buy easy microwavable things from the grocery store. A lot of my on campus friends are from inclined to eat dinning hall food, which isn’t that horrible, fast food, and microwavables.</p>
<p>When I lived in a dorm, my meals consisted of unlimited Chef Boyardee anything, campus meals, instant hot chocolate, and those little Annie Chung noodle packs.</p>
<p>In the dining hall things I typically ate were a salads, pasta, grilled cheese, stir fry, grilled chicken, etc. For breakfast I always had oatmeal and something else, like an english muffin. I did eat a lot of bagels at campus coffee shops too.</p>
<p>With my boyfriend whose school doesn’t have a dining hall or a real “meal plan,” we almost always ate fast food like Wendy’s, McDonald’s, etc. because it is so cheap and I’m poor!</p>
<p>I lived on campus, ten steps from the dining hall, and it really wasn’t difficult to cook my own meals - I didn’t get a meal plan. Most dorms at my school (and most others, I’m assuming) are equipped with a full kitchen, so if you want to make real food there’s absolutely nothing stopping you but you. I cooked real dinners for myself about five out of seven nights a week, and there were usually a few other people in the dorm cooking with me :)</p>
<p>pastapastapasta and some more pasta. 5lb of spaghetti for $2.50 cannot be beat. just make sure to buy some veggies and fruit every now and then.</p>
<p>At my college, where we don’t have a cafeteria but instead a bunch of restaurants, people tend to grab that. (It’s not all fast food – some decently healthy stuff, but not too much.) There’s a small market on campus, but it’s more expensive than, say, Safeway, and it’s pretty much like a gas station store. Some people will do some shopping off campus if they have cars, so sometimes people will cook with their floors and there’ll be a decent, home cooked meal once a month or so.</p>
<p>But, for the most part, yeah – spaghetti. :P</p>
<p>If you’re going to eat pasta, do yourself a favor and buy 100% whole grain. Regular pasta is pretty much empty calories (even that which is made with enriched flour) and made from refined flour. Your colon will thank you.</p>
<p>“Fast food is rarely the cheapest way to eat. And it’s extremely unhealthy.”</p>
<p>No kidding it’s unhealthy. Buying groceries can definitely be cheaper, but if you don’t have a kitchen available to cook in or run the risk of people stealing all your food in a common area like I did, that’s not exactly practical. When you have to eat out, buying “healthy” foods like salad can be very expensive, and when you can buy food at McDonald’s for $1, that tends to be a better option.</p>
<p>Fast food is still expensive. Even if I get a Cookout tray for $4.25, it is still kind of a lot. On sale I got 2 loaves of whole grain bread for $2.50 (on sale) and a jar of natural peanut butter for like $3.50. That is like 10-15 sandwiches for roughly 6 bucks. I get a lot of raisins, oatmeal, and just drink water.</p>
ding! ding! ding! we have a winner!
Seriously, water is the number 1 way to choose a healthier alternative while saving money. You just can’t lose with water.</p>
<p>A lot of the time, when people think that they’re hungry they are really just thirsty. So drinking oodles of water can definately help if you are someone who would rather spend your money on FOOD rather than snacks.</p>