NUTRITION AT LEHIGH AND BEYOND
The data utilized in these visualizations comes from a student-conducted survey. To see the questions asked, view the PDF here.
Demographics
This snapshot illustrates the demographics represented in our survey. As noted on the sidebar of the visualization, our survey had a total of 133 respondents.
94 identified as female, 38 identified as male, and 2 identified as other.
Ages ranged from 17 to 20, a majority being 18 years old. Click the "view site" button to open to an interactive representation of this data.
A baseline
This data was gathered during the preliminary research from the American Heart Association. The data shows the proper number of servings a person should consume a day for each food group, based on a 1,600 calorie diet.
This visualization can be used to contextualize the data we received from our survey, especially for the question "how much do you know about the nutrition guidelines for your age group" and can be used to determine if Lehigh students both know and consume exactly what they should be eating.
Click the "view site" button to open to an interactive representation of this data.
A comparison
As mentioned in the graphic, this visualization represents how many servings of each food group students eat in an average day.
Across the board, students at Lehigh are consistently falling short of their dietary requirements. A majority of students only consume 2 servings of dairy a day, which is 0.5 servings less than the recommended average. For fats, a majority of students consume 2 servings, which is on par with the AHA recommended average. For fruits, a majority of students consume 1 serving of fruit a day, which is 3 servings less than the AHA recommended average. For grains, a majority of students consume 2 servings, which is 4 servings under the AHA recommended average. For protein, a majority of students consume 2 servings a day, which is 2.5 servings under the recommended average. Lastly, for vegetables, a majority of students only consume 1 serving a day, which is 2.5 servings under the AHA recommended average.
These findings report a general malnutrition among the Lehigh student population. Why does this matter? According to LiveStrong.com, "Not getting enough nutrients can result in malnutrition. Mild symptoms of malnutrition include dizziness, fatigue and weight loss. In severe cases, symptoms such as hair loss, fainting and lack of menstruation can occur."
On a broader scale, not eating the proper amount of nutrients can lead to a lack of energy, which can negatively impact academic, social, and athletic performance. As college students, such a sacrifice takes a toll.
Where are students eating?
After seeing the lack of nutrition across the board, we decided to take a closer look into where students were eating and the role that dining hall choices played on nutrition. Click the link below to see the full Tableau story.
By clicking through eat location, it is noted that students who report eating at locations on the more extreme ends of the spectrum ("Never" or "All the time") typically display the greatest difference between servings eaten of each food group and the servings recommended by the AHA.
Take On-Campus cafes, for example. The students who said they eat there "often"report the highest amount of servings eaten in a day across the board. The students who reported eating there "all the time," conversely, have the lowest. Such a discrepancy may point to a difference in the students' interpretation of the question itself. Perhaps a student who reports eating at a location "often" as opposed to "all the time" does so because he or she makes a more concerted effort to diversify his or her palette and thus is more nutritionally conscious, explaining the difference in servings of food eaten.
Separately, the On-Campus dining halls seem to be offering students opportunities for nutritious eating regardless of how often they choose to dine there, as indicated by the servings reported (all on-par or exceeding the AHA recommendation).
In the Greek House graphic, more detail about our demographic is revealed. Few of our respondents report dining in Greek houses, indicating either a lack of responses from fraternity or sorority members in general or a overall distaste for the food served within those Greek houses. The students who did choose to eat there sometimes, often, or all the time were generally not meeting guidelines for nutritious eating across the board.
Similar patterns emerge within each dining location. Scroll through to explore the data for yourself by clicking the button at the top of this section or the "full screen mode" at the bottom of the visualization itself.
The mental toll
The responses to the survey indicated that in general, students weren't hitting the baseline requirements when it came to nutrition. This led us to ponder how well students really knew the guidelines for nutritional eating. We asked students to rate their knowledge of nutritional eating on a scale from 1-10, with 1 indicating little to no knowledge and 10 indicating a great deal of knowledge.
While it might have been interesting to see how well students ate and how much they knew about nutritional eating, a more interesting and startling trend emerged when paired with the students' rating of their self-image.
The instructions on the right-hand side of the graphic explain how to interact with the data by gender. After clicking the bars, it is noted that the more students feel they know about nutritional eating, the lower they rate their satisfaction with their body and how positively their perceive themselves.
This findings indicate that perhaps knowledge about nutrition roots itself in a societal desire to be fit, healthy, and attractive. Such a pressure appears to manifest itself in students' rating of their self-perception.
Student's Habits and the Impact on Their Health
One component of the survey that is not directly related or impacted by where students eat on campus and what they are consuming, but is still an integral part of their overall health, is their habits outside of what nutrients they are putting into their bodies. This component of the survey discusses the trends in participant's overall health ratings, filtered but their habits by month. The graphs show respondent's average scores for their overall health separated by rating category for each activity.
While many of these trends could have been easily predicted, there were a few surprises in the data. Scroll through the story to view the data for each of the categories, which include habits such as sleeping, studying, drinking, going out, smoking and exercising.