College Student Health: How Cooking Can Promote Nutrition and a Healthy Diet

This paper focuses on college student health and the manner in which nutrition and overall health can be improved by cooking. College students are at a high risk of poor health because of the college lifestyle. They are faced with a great deal of demands on their time from classes, extracurricular activities, work, and friends. Many students cite this lack of time as one of the main reasons they do not prepare their meals at home. Students also struggle with the perceived inadequacy of their cooking skills, and therefore find it much easier to purchase prepared food instead of making their own. Maintaining a healthy diet is something that is very important for people of all ages especially now that chronic diseases are appearing in younger populations. Because of this, it is important to look at college students to see how we can help them to prevent the development of such diseases. To combat this cycle of unhealthy eating, I created an entry level cookbook designed for students who are new to cooking. The cookbook can help students learn how to prepare foods in a healthy way. Such a cookbook can demonstrate how simple it can be to eat a healthy diet, and can make a difference in a student’s overall health.