Holiday Gobbling Weighs Down Students  

BOSTON — If there are college kids at your Thanksgiving table, don’t encourage them to gobble so much. New research suggests that the typical student leaves the holiday weekend as stuffed as the turkey, gaining more than a pound during the short break.

I thought this article was so interesting! Not only did it pertain to the time (Thanksgiving), but it was a study done on college students! The article even stated the common need for homemade food – this is something I’ve definitely been having a problem with. The cafeteria food, in my opinion, is a C-. Most of the time I’m sick after eating it, so I tend to stick with the basics: bagel, cereal, sandwhich, etc. It’s no wonder us college ‘kids’ are gaining a pound or two when we go home, we’re deprived of GOOD food for months at a time! Besides, isn’t Thanksgiving known for feasting and eating as much as possible?! The main theme of the holiday is food!

Holly Hull is the nutrition scientist responsible for making this experiment possible. She and her colleagues at the University of Oklahoma in Norman weighed 94 students the week before Thanksgiving and within a week of their return to classes (a span of roughly 12 days). The results were as follows: students gained an average of 1.1 pounds. That translates to an extra 320 daily calories, “which would be about a slice of pumpkin pie per day,” she said.

Although I found this article interesting, it didn’t really “speak” to me. I don’t really know what the big deal of 1.1 pounds is? The study was unique because of its focus – strictly on college students – but it has obviously been done before.