When choosing a college to attend in your last high school years, you look at a lot of factors. The location, your major, housing, campus activities, etc. One thing you may not think to consider lies in the food served in cafeteria. As a student athlete at Siena Heights, along with over 85% of the student body, we all live with a very vigorous schedule. What most athletes need the most besides sleep in order to succeed and be the best they can be is a good balanced diet. However, at Siena Heights it is nearly impossible to do just that. When you walk into the UC dining hall, The only food you will find for breakfast lunch and dinner are carb loaded, greasy, high calorie foods filled with sodium and MSG. They rarely offer any sort of cooked vegetable; unless you go to the salad bar, which has the same seven ingredients every day along with only fatty dressings and croutons. Which essentially negates the point of eating a salad in the first place. Additionally there is rarely ever any fresh fruit that students can enjoy during their meals or take with them, especially in the mornings. Many students, myself included, dread going to eat at the UC because we know afterwards we are going to feel slow, bloated, and most likely hungry again in the next few hours. Having fattening and greasy food all the time is bad for our health, but also for our academics. It is crucial to have a healthy balanced diet for your brain to function properly and retain information. These foods do not allow students to focus with their studies or be successful at practice.

The solution to this problem is somewhat self-explanatory, yet for some reason up until now has been impossible to achieve. The cooks and workers preparing the entrees for Siena Heights should plan out entire meals including a main entrée with a lean protein, several side dishes, and a salad that pairs with it. All of these meals should try to be grilled instead of fried, and there should be several vegetable side dishes to accompany it. Also, the salad bar should offer less fattening dressings such as oil and vinegar. And lastly, always offer a fresh fruit bar. Swap out the dessert counter and replace it with pineapple, grapes, melon, oranges, strawberries, anything fruit we will eat it. By having planned out meals with vegetable options it will allow students to have a balanced diet.

Childhood obesity has become one of the biggest health problems in the United States. Many of the causes stem from parents not providing their children with balanced meals, but I believe a bigger cause comes from after the children leave the home and have to nourish themselves. Even though each young adult should know the proper nutrition they need in order to live a healthy life and have a balanced diet, it is also up to college universities to provide those options for them. If you are paying 32,000 dollars a year to attend a private university, the least they can do for you is allow you to have a balanced diet. The fact that Siena Heights does not have fresh fruit daily, or non-fattening salad dressings is completely ridiculous. No student should dread going to eat in the UC because they know that no healthy options will be served. All in all as a student athlete along with my classmates we expect to be nourished properly in order to have peak performances both on the field and off. Changes need to be made in order to benefit the students of Siena Heights, no way around it.