This post provided by college nutritionist, author, and all around excellent source of healthful info, Melanie Jatsek.

Campus dining halls are amazing places.  Besides a Las Vegas buffet, where else can you find Chinese food, Mexican food, and a pasta, deli, salad and dessert bar all in one room?  They are amazing, but amazing doesn’t always equal good for you.  Sometimes it can be down right challenging to navigate through the lines and find something that isn’t fried or covered in some sort of sauce.  To make it easy for you, here are the top 5 dining hall food traps to watch out for. Some may surprise you!

Wraps or Burritos:

You’re probably wondering why.  Most tortillas used to make wraps and burritos contain trans fats (trans fatty acids), which are even worse for you than saturated fats!  The scary thing about them is, they make their way into your brain and disrupt communication between your brain cells.  It’s sort of like when you use your cell phone to call your friend’s cell phone and the two of you keep dropping the call – you can’t seem to make a connection!  The only way to tell for sure if a tortilla contains trans fats is by looking at the nutrition facts label on the package for the words “partially hydrogenated oils.”  Obviously you can’t do this in your dining hall, so you may want to ask the food service staff to take a peak for you. Read More »

College brings a whole lot of new experiences, new lessons and new people. New people means new friends, right? Yeah, most of the time. But there’s a special assortment of people that you can find on any street, on any campus, in any city in the country. It doesn’t matter where you go – you have met these people before.

Like the Bible Chucker…

Ah, the caf, where you can “all you can eat” to your heart’s content (and waistline’s dismay). Also where you can find out that you’re going to Hell. Yep, nine times out of ten, this is where you will experience The Religious Fanatic. Not just a Bible thumper, but more like a Bible chucker. Yeah, no thumping for them. They throw it at you. Hard.

Far more judgmental than grandma could ever think about being (at least she’ll make you a pie after), this guy has everybody labeled a severe sinner. He’s easy to recognize as he is the only one dressed in a suit despite the fact that it may just be 80 plus degrees outside. If that doesn’t tip you off, perhaps the stack of “How To Live” pamphlets in his hand or the giant poster that says “Smoking Kills” with a stereotypical picture of Hell on it helps. Or maybe the fact that he’s old and bearded? It’s not like he’s trying to hide. He wants sinners to go to Hell and he has no problem letting you know (by screaming into a megaphone) as you attempt to scarf down that fro yo.

He sort of reminds you of the people who stood on street corners back in the day, preaching about the different religions. Only, he’s all about the hellfire and brimstone and not so much about the nice salvation part. Read More »