Fast Food Firmly Entrenched In Students’ Lifestyle

Recent research backs up University of Leicester campaign to promote healthy eating amongst students

A survey of eating habits among first year self-catering students showed that university lifestyle tends to lead to an increased consumption of fast foods.

This was more noticeable amongst male students, who confessed to thinking of cooking as ‘women’s work’ and were more likely to eat fast food than their female counterparts, while female students were more likely to be influenced by worries about weight gain and appearance.

The study, carried out by student Hannah Cooper under the supervision of Dr Ellen Annandale at the University of Leicester Department of Sociology, also indicated that students’ fast food consumption increased when they left home and began to cater for themselves, in spite of the known link between fast food consumption and obesity.

Convenience, peer pressure and budget appear to be the main reasons for their eating habits, while the gender difference is widened by a male culture of greater alcohol consumption though males also played more sport.

Another factor in students’ choice of fast foods was quite simply that they liked it. Pizza proved to be favourite, followed by pasta, curry and French fries.

While the students studied felt that living among new people had not influenced their eating habits, nevertheless peer pressure played a major role in decisions about when and what to eat and whether or not to cook for themselves. Read more