And remove cheap, high calorie, low nutrition foods. No reason schools ought to provide students with tons of mac & cheese, they can do that to themselves. Give them healthy, nutritious options with the meal plans, and let them spend extra on the unhealthy stuff if they really want it.

Isn't college where people are supposed to be responsible for their own actions? Or have we extended the hand-holding that far out?

Sure, they can be responsible for their own actions. Doesn't mean the schools have to provide them the option to be actively harmful to their health. They're adults (as mentioned in another comment). If they want to buy a few cases of Coca Cola and drink that instead of water every day for 4 years, that's their prerogative. No school should stop them from making such a terrible, stupid mistake, but no school should present that to them as part of the meal plan either.

Yup, likewise I knew a guy who flunked out his sophomore year because he spent all of his time playing Quake 2 on the dorm's LAN. The university offered plenty of classes he could have been spending his time on, and he chose differently. Only so much you can do to save a man from himself.

There's a little bit of cognitive dissonance going on here. If they're responsible for their actions, and they're adults, why are you taking an option away from them in fears that they're "making a mistake"? This is universally seen as hand-holding.

The option isn't taken away. They can go to the grocery store if they want. That's still an option. There's no cognitive dissonance. As an institution, a university is not required to provide every option to its students. It, similarly, shouldn't bar students from making choices they want to make.

EDIT: And if they make choices that turn them into unsuitable students (poor grades, arrests, whatever), the institution is free to suspend them as appropriate.

This is a trinary variable, not a binary one. Sure, between the two options of giving people freedom to make their own mistakes versus applying coercion for their own good, I'm in favor of the first option. But there is a third: soft paternalism, giving people freedom to do what they want but setting things up so that the right choice is the easiest. Such evidence as we have, indicates that it works very well.

So should the meal plan serve alcohol, too, to avoid reacting to 'fears that they're "making a mistake"'?

That's a bit of a straw man. You can choose alcohol or no alcohol. But you don't choose mac n cheese or not -- you choose mac n cheese or some other food.

You can choose alcohol or some other beverage.

Choosing to offer only healthy foods at a location provided by the school does not preclude the students getting unhealthy food anywhere else. It's just making a healthy choice available, not making unhealthy choices unavailable.

My last year of college the university finished a brand new dining hall and forced every student living on campus to buy an expensive meal plan, justifying this by saying students ate poorly and the meal plans would force them to eat a balanced diet. Well, my diet was perfectly fine - was being the key word, as I can't resist cookies and ice cream for long when I am surrounded by them at a cafeteria - and as a matter of fact, a lot cheaper. A lot cheaper, because the basic meal plan only got me one meal a day, so I still had to buy groceries.

So I guess the answer is yes.

Yes, and the cafeteria is run by people who take actions.

Sure, but many colleges require you to get a meal-plan with the dorm room. And, IME, the food was expensive, and garbage.

Yea, starve the skinny students!

Why would they starve? Are skinny students only capable of eating unhealthy, carb-loaded, crap? Most healthy skinny people I know eat fruits, vegetables, and moderate amounts of meat, dairy and carbs, or they run 20 miles a day.

20 miles a day? Surely you aren't serious? Someone check my math but at a 7 minute mile, that's a 2 hour run every day, plus warmup, stretch, change, cleanup time. That feels absurd for anybody with a job, family, etc. Maybe every other day would make more sense.

A couple specific individuals I've known. Both ran 15-20 miles a day. They'd just go for runs most evenings or mornings and run and run. At least every weekday for one, the other I know ran daily. One was a Catholic seminarian (ran in the mornings, no family, obviously). The other was a middle-aged, family man, working as an engineer. He'd run most of his life. Both were African, one Nigerian (the seminarian), I don't recall where the other was from.

> One was a Catholic seminarian

That explains a lot. One of the true and tested recipes for libido suppression the Church takes to heart is to physically and mentally exahust their horny young men until they are not horny any more.

This of course is just my opinion, but an informed one. I went to a Catholic mid-school and highschool, and even when we were not 100% on board as a seminarist would be, sports was something the administration promoted very heavily. We'd also get to know lots of seminarists that would come to do field work there prior to taking their vows, and an almost universal trait of them was their passion for sports.

> He'd run most of his life. Both were African, one Nigerian (the seminarian), I don't recall where the other was from.

Now you're making sense. For someone who's not been doing serious long distance running since childhood, 20 miles in a week is quite good. From what I've read in running magazines, and personal experience, doing much more than 30-40 miles a week is not good for your body (esp. knees). 100+ miles per week is crazy.

I guess the confusing part was that you said "most". Unless you only know a few skinny people.

Ah, that "or they run 20 miles a day." was an aside at the end. The first part was what I typically see of healthy, skinny people, the second part of very few (substitute other sorts of crazy levels of physical activity for the running if you want).

Two hours a day is not a crazy number at all for some endurance sports. If you do cycle racing 10 hours per week is a good starting point to build up endurance.

But that works because cycling isn't weight bearing, so after the initial exponential learning curve you can pretty much do as much of it as you have time and motivation.

20 miles a day of running, on the other hand, is absolutely not typical. Other than ultra-runners no professional does >100mi/wk regularly simply because the diminishing returns don't justify the linear increase in injury risk and aggravation (it's running, injury incidence is already crazy high).

Capable? No, people with the sort of metabolism I'm talking about need that (high carb/protein) on top of the healthy diet you described. Removing that dining option to keep fatsos from gorging themselves doesn't seem fair. High calorie food lets me get adequate energy from a reasonably-sized dish.

A brief skinny manifesto: I hate how the world caters to the obese. Thermostat kept at low temperature in all seasons because of fat insulation. Replace high calorie options with high fiber so their overworked/stretched system feels "full." All diet/nutrition advice biased towards losing weight. The list goes on... and things geared towards losing weight/being comfortable as an obese person naturally are useless or make life worse for somebody trying to gain/maintain weight.

It's a public health crisis, I get it, but it still sucks.

> A brief skinny manifesto: I hate how the world caters to the obese. Thermostat turned way down in the winter/up in the summer because of fat insulation. Replace high calorie options with high fiber so their overworked/stretched system feels "full." All diet/nutrition advice biased towards losing weight. The list goes on... and things geared towards losing weight/being comfortable as an obese person naturally are useless or make life worse for somebody for whom weight loss is unhealthy.

So the obese are oppressing the skinny? First I've heard of this. Please, tell me more.

More specific than oppression. As obesity and its effects are seen as acutely unhealthy, quality of life for underweight people is sacrificed for the health benefit of the obese. Clearly there is not some cabal of fat dudes stroking their bellies plotting ways to stick it to the skinny man.

[stops stroking]

...Yes! Clearly!

That would be ridiculous. Obviously. I mean, why would fat dudes even do that? Ha ha ha ha... ha ha. Ha.

[whispering] Drop the thermostat another 2 degrees in zone 4-1831A/N and put 5% more cellulose powder in the cafeteria meatloaf.

/s

This sounds to me like yet another form of tribalism. I get that people may become annoyed when the world appears to be shifting its loyalties away from their tribe towards someone else's, but no good will come of deciding that the skinnies and the fatties are natural enemies, and are responsible for the others' ills.

Assuming access to quality foods, but activity and metabolism keep them skinny (that is, this is a healthy skinny, not a malnourished skinny), in what ways are below-average weight people's quality of life sacrificed?

It's very difficult to buy clothes that fit, for one. Especially suits.

That's fair, but in my experience (from when I was fat), buying clothes that fit may not have been hard. But buying clothes that fit and looked good was hard. They even have specialty shops for the particularly obese, it's not like they're finding well-fitting suits off the rack at Jos. A. Banks.

EDIT: Actually, clothes that fit could be hard. I wasn't terribly round, I ended up with a 38" waist at my fattest at 5' 10", but usually around a 36" waist. But my legs, thighs in particular, were not toned or thin. My option on pants almost always required me to go up several inches on the waist to get pants with large enough legs for me. My thighs, now, are well-muscled and toned, but I still have a hard time finding pants that fit them well now that I'm down to a 32" waist.

But I still don't think the problem is catering to the obese hurting the skinny. The problem is that being that thin is abnormal (from a statistical perspective). Consequently, it's a small market. It's hard to justify making off-the-rack shirts that fit a 6'2" 120lb man. Just as it's hard to justify making of-the-rack shirts that fit a 5'4" 250lb man.

If you're having trouble keeping healthy weight eating normal food, it may be that you have some digestive disease/problem rather than just "fast metabolism". (Or it could be an appetite problem.)

Consider this: if you had a fast metabolism, your body would be producing more heat than a normal person; where else would the extra energy go? This means you would prefer lower-than-normal room temperature. If you're having trouble keeping weight AND you prefer higher-than-normal room temperature, it means you're not getting all the energy you should from the food you eat, in other words, your system is digesting food incompletely.

I do have a digestive disease myself, and at my worst before surgery + medication, I was drinking glasses of custard every day just to stay above 155 lbs; I'm a pretty tall guy, ideal weight that I'm seeing now is around 190 lbs. I gained 30 lbs in one month after the surgery.

Beer kegs on the top floor of a tall building with no elevator.

Solution: Uber.