Tuesday, January 29, 2019
How Dancers Can Eat Healthy in a College Dining Hall
Dance Magazine: The schedule of a college dancer is no joke: Between academics, studio classes and rehearsals, getting the fuel you need to power through it all is essential. But unless you live off-campus or have a kitchen in your dorm, you may feel like you're at the mercy of your school's dining hall.
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For starters, I think everyone, not just dancers, could learn a bit on how to eat healthier on a college campus. Us too in the technical theatre department, considering the amount of hours necessary for project work and crew calls. The first point, or rather, challenge this article brings up is “limited hours that don’t work with your schedule.” I know that our free hours, specially if we have conservatory hour and a crew call on the same day, don’t always line up with when we’re hungry, and sometimes can cause our eating to get way out of wack. Sometimes I’ll try to keep some snacks like granola bars in my bag or in the studio in case of this, but I definitely need to get better at it. The second thing they mention is the lack of variety in the meal plan. This holds especially true if you have eating restrictions, as I am vegetarian, which limits your options even more. I tend to overcome this by getting different things from Entropy+ or sometimes Giant Eagle to change it up. The third point in the article is essentially the same as the first one. Lastly, I do try to keep things like fruit, peanut butter, baby carrots, etc. in my dorm room too. It helps out a lot especially when you don’t feel like going out anywhere, but you still need to eat something. Overall I don’t think this article really touched on anything that most people don’t already know of.
I could complain about CMU dining for years (hello actual dead cockroach found IN someone’s food @ INoodle last week) but I will limit myself to on topic rants only. This article it not only relevant to dancers, it’s really more about trying time to eat healthy on a conservatory style schedule, or just a busy schedule in general. Similarly to Ari I’m a vegitarian and can sometimes have trouble finding a healthy variety on campus without dragging my friends to the same vegetarian friendly places over and over again. The hours on campus can also sometimes become an issue, especially on the weekends when very few places are open in the in between hours (trying to find anything but abp at 3pm on a sunday is a struggle). Personally I’m glad CMU allows its upperclassmen to live off campus and I’m very excited to live where I can just cook for myself. These struggles clearly relate to the topics in the article proving its relevance. Lack of variety and wacky hours are a commonality. Overall healthy eating can be challenging for dancers and everyone else.
I definitely agree with what Maggie and Ari said about how this article is relevant to not just dancers, but considering it was posted in Dance Magazine, it makes sense that they made dances their target audience. But yes, I think everyone can benefit from having some food in their room and snacks in their bags. I especially agree with what Ari said about when we have conservatory hour and a crew call on the same day we have very little time to eat and often we are not hungry at that time. And even if we are hungry, the variety of places we can go to that are fast enough are very few so the tips this article had about helping make food you’ve had a lot feel new were very helpful, but also I don’t think this article was anything special. Most of their advice seemed more like common knowledge it can always be nice to be reminded of these tips when one gets in a routine of eating just whatever they know they like which may not be the healthiest option.
This article highlights the needs of dancers and how they need to properly fuel their bodies (which is understandable as going to school for dance can be very physically taxing on one’s body) but I think there can be something said for anyone who is going to school for the arts, or even just in college in general. Especially at Carnegie Mellon so far, I am finding it hard to properly eat healthy in a way that coincides with classes, rehearsals, projects, study time, and also just the normal functional hours of our dining locations and local food places. At the beginning of every semester I always say that I am going to start off strong and meal prep, plan good meals, and eat in a way that is healthy and nutritious for my body, but in all honesty, it usually isn’t a month before I am back to eating meals, that honestly should not be considered real meals in the first place. Part of me thinks this is just the adaptation of being a college student and adjusting to the lifestyle of having limited hours of the day and the freedom to eat whatever or whenever you want without someone stopping you, but I definitely think a collective change needs to happen in the way college students as a whole nourish our bodies- and if it must start with dancers, then so be it.
These all seem like helpful suggestions. I know I have a lot of trouble with campus food, but I live off campus so I am not as stuck with campus food as I was freshman year. I’m mostly vegan, so that is part of what makes campus options extra limited for me, but I think eating healthy in general with CMU campus food isn’t too difficult. There are a fair number of pretty solid salad options, and many of the other dining establishments have something healthy or a way to make it healthy. There is pretty consistent access to fruits and vegetables even if the fruit tends to be a bit overpriced. A lot of the campus food is still a bit soggy and bland, but I have found there are some options that are both healthy and reasonably good. I still prefer being able to make my own food, but when I get busy, campus food is food.
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