Fighting the Freshman Fifteen

After anxious freshmen meet their visiting parents at Johnston Gate today, there will be discussions of roommates, concentrations, new experiences, and a variety of other subjects, almost all of which, ironically, will have the backdrop of delicious and unhealthy off-campus dinners. Parental love too often crowds out honesty, and the extra pounds accumulated since August probably find a place in the dialogue. The “freshman fifteen” is accepted as part of the quintessential college experience. Everyone is aware of the dangers of abrupt weight gain during freshman year, and many students, as they visited colleges as prefroshes, probably even judged current college students. Yet even with this forewarning, the extra pounds continues to accumulate on college freshmen. But the fate of the freshman fifteen is not inevitable and, ultimately, cannot be blamed on anything other than personal discipline.

The transition to college life is a stressful process full of physical, emotional, and psychological change. Students must adopt a new, overwhelming lifestyle—moving in with strangers, living in a foreign city, attending a new school, and adopting a radically different schedule, among other challenges. It can be easy to ignore basic nutrition while adjusting to and defining a personal and academic identity. No one denies the pressure of these circumstances, and the consequences thereof—eating extra at the dining halls, skipping meals, snacking while studying late at night, ordering-in food, decreasing exercise, and increasing alcohol intake—produce the expected, yet accepted freshman fifteen.

Yet Harvard is surprisingly replete with resources to combat these pressures’ effects on nutrition—starting with the people who choose our food. Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) has spearheaded a Food Literacy Project, which educates students in “four inter-connected area[s] of food in society,” among them nutrition, according to HUDS’ website. The HUDS administration is aware that students do not, unsurprisingly, gravitate towards healthy snacks late at night, and this is the first time students experience this kind of schedule. Food Literacy Project Administrator Jessica S. Zdeb ’04 says that the goal of the project is to “educate students not only about being healthy in college but being healthy away from a home environment where you have choices. We need to set habits for life after graduation as well.”

HUDS’ adjustments are not merely a trivial change of focus. In developing the Food Literacy Project, officials from HUDS consulted Chairman of the Department of Nutrition Walter C. Willett at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Willett emphasizes a heightened concern over saturated fat, instead of total fat, and amount of fiber intake. In keeping with these findings, the HUDS menu planners added whole grain pasta as a daily lunch item last spring. Additionally, the Food Literacy Project is currently modifying the six identifiers on menu cards in dining halls, replacing “percentage of calories from fat” with the amounts of saturated fat and fiber. The efforts promoting nutrition literacy extend beyond the College dining halls, as well. At this year’s annual Harvest of Health Fair, representatives from the HSPH spoke with students and distributed literature on issues from eating disorders to the effects of sleep deprivation on weight gain.

While Harvard’s health experts are working to inform students, there is no shortage of campus student groups that focus on nutrition, either. Eating Concerns Hotline and Outreach (ECHO) is dedicated to peer-counseling those with concerns about body image, eating disorders, and nutrition concerns. The Undergraduate Council (UC), generally regarded as a source of party funds and not health help, is forming a freshman dining committee with the hope of informing HUDS about the freshman dining experience at Harvard.

With the growing number of pudge-fighting resources on campus, perhaps this year’s freshman class will begin to reverse the trend of freshman weight gain. This year, Associate Professor of Epidemiology Karen B. Michels’ new freshman seminar, “You Are What You Eat,” received 85 applications, and this high number shows that students are increasingly concerned about leading healthy lifestyle. The course itself provides an overview about nutrition, including what encompasses a healthy diet, why obesity exists among children, and how genetically engineered foods effect people worldwide. It also questions the responsibility of food providers and national healthy guidelines established by the Food and Drug Administration.

Nutritional problems, however, will not disappear overnight. In a highly intellectual environment, it is easy to dismiss concern over the freshman fifteen as a consequence of society’s obsession with body image. What is not easy to accept is that weight gain in short time periods is not an image concern, but rather a health concern. The Harvard experience includes taking incredible classes, meeting amazing people, and establishing patterns for independent life after graduation—which should include, from the first day of shopping period, a better understanding of the basic nutritional practices that lead to healthy living.



Giselle Barcia ’08, a Crimson editorial editor, is an English and American languages and literature concentrator in Mather House.