College Student Risk Essay

The article, “Risk Factors Associated with Overweight and Obese College Student”, the authors Melissa N. Desai, William C. Miller, Betty Staples and Terrill Bravender conducted a study on how food plays a role in college students life along with being physically inactive. An extensive survey was sent through email to three campuses in North Carolina. This email was sent to all undergraduates with the exception of some because of internet difficulties not all the students received the email. The total resulted in 4,201 undergraduate students who received the email. This study used the Eating Attitudes Test 26 (EAT 26) questionnaire that asked multiple questions even though it was normally used to diagnose eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia nervosa (Desai, Miller, Staples, & Bravender, 2008).
In this study, 78.5 percent were considered normal weight and 16.5 percent were overweight or obese. Even though there was more normal weight than overweight students in this particular study, that is not the case for every college. Overweight students were more likely to report complete physical inactivity, binge eating, dieting and a desire to be thinner compared to their classmates of normal weight. Instead of eating healthier, college students chose to diet and not change their physical activity which does not work nor is healthy. The authors suggest that when educating college students, they should receive psychological help as well because it is a difficult process to make health changes (Desai, Miller, Staples, & Bravender,