Aim: To date very little is known about the
nutrition habits of university students in
Germany. Is the diet of the German student
really as unhealthy as the media tell us? And
e.g. how do the nutrition habits and food
consumption of female university students in
Germany differ from those of their contemporaries
who are not studying? To answer these
questions was one of the aims of our study
“Women – University – Career. Nutrition?” We
sought information not only about the career
ambitions of female German students but, in
this context, also about their nutrition habits.
In part I of the study we established the
proportions of underweight, normal weight
and overweight female university students
and discussed some aspects of their eating
habits. It is the aim of this part of the study to
see how often these students eat what kind
of food.
Method: As part of our empirical study carried
out at the end of 2007 we developed
a questionnaire and sent it by e-mail to all
1044 female students of Furtwangen University,
Germany. 265 students (25.4 %) sent the
filled-in questionnaire back to us. The nutrition
and food questions discussed here were
closed-ended questions.
Results: Nutrition habits show an astonishingly
high proportion of students eating
wholefood diets. Also about 30 % of the students
often eat so-called organic food. More
than half of the students eat fruit at least once
a day, similar was the frequency of consumption
of vegetables and salad. Only 6.2 % of the
students were vegetarians. Most of the nonvegetarians
ate meat and/or sausage at least
two or three times a week. They rarely ate fast
food, but had an astonishingly high level of
consumption of sweets and snacks. Surprisingly,
the amount of sweets consumed was
higher in the group of underweight students
than in the group of students in the normal
weight range.
Conclusions: These data reveal quite a highlevel
of interest in healthy nutrition among
the female students surveyed, and agree with
the results of former studies which showed
that women, especially well educated
women, make an effort to eat healthily. But
their frequent consumption of fruit and vegetables
and their avoidance of fast-food is in
contrast to their high level of sweet consumption.
We are not sure whether this above-average
consumption of sweets and snacks is
only an expression of female nutritional preferences
or e.g. is a reaction to the increased
stress at university today. With regard to their
future jobs it would be sensible to inform all
students about the importance of nutrition
for efficiency and fitness and about the potential
bio-psychosocial inter-relationships
with working life and career.
