From students living on campus to students who spend their time on campus, it’s important for Bobcats to properly fuel their bodies. Dominique Alfaro, a graduate instructional assistant, offers her advice to Bobcats for a healthy semester through nutritional guidance.
Alfaro states the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) recommends three meals a day, however, student’s meal times can be impacted by stress levels, the number of classes and access to resources. Regardless of these factors, Alfaro believes it’s essential for students to eat throughout the day to promote daily brain function, health and well-being.
“Proper nutrition for a student not only [helps] academically [by] having that brain food to be able to persevere through the semester but also health-wise and mentality-wise,” Alfaro said. “School is very stressful and as long as you’re able to feed your body the adequate amount of nutrition and the vitamins that it needs, I think that it eases a little bit of that stress.”
Snacks are another way students can practice healthy eating. Alfaro recommends whole food snacks. These types of snacks can be purchased at places like UAC Cafe and Paws N’ Go.
Chartwells Catering oversees most food in dining halls and throughout campus providing healthy options for students to choose from. According to Alfaro, a balanced meal consists of a variety of fruits and vegetables, grains and a source of protein.
“There’s a lot of stigma around having processed foods, of course, we don’t want to have a diet full of saturated unprocessed food but if this is all that students are able to obtain, then any food is good food,” Alfaro said.
As the manager of the student-led food pantry Bobcat Bounty, Alfaro has strong beliefs regarding food accessibility. While she believes it is important to eat nutritiously, sometimes that can mean the act of eating itself.
“We should kind of foster a shameless food environment,” Alfaro said. “We’re supposed to promote health in any way and food is health. So any type of food, in my opinion, is healthy.”
