National Nutrition Awareness month marks the Peer Health Educators' campaign to increase student awareness about dieting. To this end, PHE has sponsored several events this month including this evening's "Nutrition Mission Challenge."
Student participants are asked to keep a weeklong dietary journal to find out how healthy their diets are, what aspects of their diets are missing and how they could change their diets to be more healthy.
Also in honor of this month, University nutritionist Paula Caravati has been visiting dining halls around Grounds promoting healthy eating with special health-conscience foods, information brochures and prizes.
"Maintaining a healthy diet involves planning," Caravati said. "It's a matter of making healthier choices and behavioral changes."
Caravati also said students should embrace low-calorie, low-fat, balanced diets and should steer clear of alcohol and inadequate sleep, since these factors can impact body weight.
Anyone with a University meal plan can see Caravati for free consulting.
Now that the FDA has approved the Atkins diet, many students have opted to begin this program of low carbohydrates.
Third-year College student Victoria Negrete said although the diet is hard at first, results are really there.
"I was on it this summer for about a month," Negrete said. "I lost 15 pounds that month and dropped a dress size."
However, once she got back to school, she said she gave it up because her college lifestyle does not make it easy to cut carbs.
Other University students decide that a good way to eat healthier is to cut red meats and other animal products from their diets.
Third-year College student Kyle Seglin said being a vegetarian is quite healthy, with only one drawback.
"I was raised as a vegetarian, and the ideas are embedded in the way that I think," Seglin said. "Overall, I feel that it is a healthier diet, and I make a point of eating healthier all around."
He added that it is more of a lifestyle option than a diet. He also said it is sometimes hard to get enough protein in his diet.
"If I plan on working out, I find that I need to drink more protein shakes than other people to help increase my muscle mass," he said.
Third-year College student Kim Southern, a member of the Virginia rowing team, said she believes most diets are unhealthy.
"People on the Atkins diet, for example, are depriving themselves of one particular thing," Southern said. "A diet is healthy only if you are striving for a well-balanced one."
The Nutrition Mission Challenge is tonight at 8 p.m.in Tuttle Lounge.
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