Overall, students at Lehigh who responded to our survey are considered to be malnourished, according to the guidelines put out by the American Heart Association.

 

Though these were the findings of our survey, it is not to say these themes emerged because Lehigh does not offer these food groups, just that students at Lehigh are not choosing to eat them. This is an important distinction to make and something we wish to explore more in the future, because it would be interesting to compare exactly what Lehigh offers to students in a particular day compared to what students at Lehigh choose to eat.

 

During out data collection, we decided it would be a good idea to gather the same data from additional schools in the area -- Lafayette and Muhlenberg. Though there was not a sufficient amount of data gathered from these colleges, with only about 15-20 responses from each, the data we did gather allowed us to see where Lehigh compares very generally.

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Despite limitations in regard to time, extent of outreach, and overall workforce behind the study, this report did offer a lot of insight on nutrition at Lehigh and the surrounding schools. 

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So what?

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In general, Lehigh students consistently fell short of meeting nutritional guidelines. Regardless of the food group, most students reported consuming fewer servings than the AHA recommends. What does this mean? To start, the discrepancy between the nutrition of Lehigh students and the nutritional standards put forth by the AHA points to a limitation on students’ capabilities in other aspects of life, like athletics and social events. Separately, an startling correlation emerged between knowledge of nutritional eating and overall self-perception. The more students knew about nutritional eating, the more negatively they viewed themselves. Despite knowing, and falling short of, nutritional guidelines, students struggled with their self-image in the context of nutrition. These findings may suggest a societal pressure associated with diet and body image. Because the media perpetuates the appeal of physical appearance over actual health, perhaps students who consider themselves experts on nutrition are instead fixated on conformation to these ideals as opposed to meeting benchmark dietary guidelines.

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When juxtaposed, the findings of this report highlight the need for not only more conversation about nutrition on campus but also more thought into how those conversations are approached. If most students, for example, are falling short of nutritional guidelines, then push in information about nutrition could help raise the average dietary health of the student body population. However, our study also forwarded the notion that the more students felt they knew about nutrition, the worse they felt about themselves. Thus, this report emphasizes the necessity of a changed rhetoric when it comes to nutrition. What about nutritional-know how is currently making students think less of themselves? When discussing food and nutritional health, how can we do so in a way that allows students to perceive themselves more positively afterwards? These questions are ones potentially answered with an expansion of this report. 

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If we were to conduct this study again, we would attempt to look more closely into the actual makeup of students’ diets. What type of proteins, grains, and vegetables are they consuming? This information would give us a more detailed look at macro-nutrients and dietary make-up of students’ meals. Additionally, we would ask them about where they learned about nutrition and how those conversations were framed. Were the topics focused more on outcomes, like looking great or losing weight, or focused on inputs, like practicing healthy habits to feel better in all aspects of life? The answers to these questions would help us dig deeper into the themes present in this report. In the future, we would also include a question on our survey that was open ended so that we could hear constructive and unique feedback from all of the respondents.

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Overall, this study gave us the opportunity to explore various data-visualization software and put forth a project that means something to us and our immediate community. Thank you for taking the time to check it out!