Types of Collegiate Eaters

As a seasoned college first-year, my age-wisened collegiate experience has revealed to me a curious methodology for characterizing the bizarre habits of freshmen, called Eating in College. For your curious convience, I have catalogued the major types of collegiate eaters below. To parents reading this post, one of these selections is most likely how your child eats when not under your loving supervision.

The Childish Eater
This Eater was my first discovery upon entering college. The Childish Eater, liberated from the careful meal planning of his or her parental units, quickly reverts to his or her infantile eating habits. These toddler-tummied individuals tend to eat Froot Loops for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and more pizza or fish sticks for dinner. Dessert is ALWAYS chocolate chip cookies, and snacktime means lollipops or bubblegum.

The Secret Snacker
Either due to a constant appetite or constant access to unmonitored food sources, the Secret Snacker is always on the prowl for some sneaky noshing. This student (and yes, I admit I am occasionally this student) eats breakfast, lunch, and dinner...and a pre-breakfast snack, an after-breakfast snack, a pre-lunch snack, an afternoon snack, an after-dinner snack, and a midnight snack. Keep your eye open for mysteriously disappearing food; if you noticed that your cereal box is suddenly empty, or that your granola bars vanished overnight, or that four of the cookies your mother sent you have dissolved into devastated crumbs, you might very well have a Secret Snacker in your midst. This individual will either start to order pants one size up, or will soon take the first step to correcting his or her hungry habits: subbing in fruits and vegetables for fries or chips at dinner and lunch.

The Man of Many Meals
I have met several Men of Many Meals in college (the word "man" is included in the title because I have yet to meet any women who admit to this, but that DOES NOT mean they aren't out there), and their dietary habits descend from one of three sources: perpetual hunger for food, perpetual hunger for muscle, or perpetual hunger for helping their sports team win. Remember the string bean boys from high school who eat ridiculous piles of food and complain that they're still hungry? They don't go away in college. Their appetites just grow along with their height, and,  with my college's invention of Fourth Meal (a fourth official meal of the day that occurs between 9PM and midnight), Men of Many Meals often surface in the dining halls for breakfast, lunch, dinners 1 and 2, and fourth meal. Those with perpetual hunger for muscle tend to have meals of chicken breast and salad or broccoli approximately three to five times a day. I suppose the lack of fats in their diet doesn't help their bellies stay full for long. Finally, those with the hunger to win with their team: AKA football. I swear that the football team eats half of our school's food. The players, who attend, again, three to five meals a day, pile their trays high with chicken, and hamburgers, and salad, and fruits, and cake, and cookies, and pizza, and pasta, and, well, whatever else fits on the tray between three trips up to the buffet.

The Fake Eater
In college, it becomes more difficult to hide eating disorders or food allergies. After a while, it is simply too challenging to ignore the boy who is allergic to gluten, milk, red meat, and green vegetables, and the girl with an eating disorder. Hopefully, though, the Fake Eaters will learn to enjoy dining hall food before their four years are up.

The Homesick International Students
Several students in my dorm struck a new chord of sympathy from my heart when they wept and wailed over something that simply must be called home-cooked-food-sickness (homesickness, except with a desire for home-cooked food, instead of simply home). One boy went knocking on thirty different doors on his quest for rice, explaining that "I cannot consider my feast a meal unless it has RICE!". Students in some dorms even have special food lockers and professional kitchens, in which they whip up their secret homeland food specialties for a taste of the familiar. And, honestly, you've just got to love the collection of individuals who have Polish sausages, local beers, exotic fruits, and cupcake-shaped sprinkles shipped to their dorm rooms.