{"id":17961,"date":"2018-01-19T16:08:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T21:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=17961"},"modified":"2018-04-02T11:55:36","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T16:55:36","slug":"eating-clean-and-happy-my-college-student-lunch-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2018\/01\/19\/eating-clean-and-happy-my-college-student-lunch-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Eating Clean and Happy: My College Student Lunch Box"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0There is a running joke that college students live off day old pizza, Ramen noodles and free food from random events around campus.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Now for some people, that\u2019s <\/span>the life.<\/span><\/i> Pizza three meals in a row and the perfect excuse, \u201cI\u2019m in college, I\u2019ll have time to eat healthy later.\u201d That is perfectly fine for a while, honestly that was me my first couple years of college.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"pizza\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0But how about when fried food and cheap sodium soaked noodles starts getting old, and eating out 5+ times a week starts to make your wallet cry. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Over Winter Break, and into spring semester, I have started packing my own lunch. I still eat out here and there but overall it has saved me money and I am able to eat healthier. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0One of the great things I love about it is customization. Packing my own lunch enables me to eat healthier, surprisingly cheaper and have what I actually want to eat. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Another great benefit is accommodation for dietary restrictions. Ever notice how most vegetarian options are cheese related? Yeah, I can\u2019t eat cheese. First time I walked into the Tartan marketplace with a friend, the only thing we saw on the menu I might actually be able to eat was cheap fries and possibly a salad.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"salad\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0This outing was immediately followed by the thought, \u201cI could make my own salad for cheaper.\u201d Thus the idea of making my own college student lunch box was born.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0I have a few tips when it comes to creating your own lunches. First, have a basic idea of what your going for. Eating healthy is going to look a little different for everyone, for me it\u2019s a lot of veggies with some grains and fruit. In other words, I eat like a rabbit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Figure out what is healthy for you and use that as a template. If you aren\u2019t quite sure, a good start is balancing your food groups and cutting back on fried and fast food. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Second tip, to an extent it\u2019s cheaper to make from scratch then to buy pre packaged. For example, my typical lunch is a salad and some sides. I could buy a pretty good pre made salad at Kroger and put that in a cooler, but that salad is probably between four and six dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Farmers<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0I have classes five days a week so that is about $30 in chopped greens. Let\u2019s say I also spend four dollars each meal for my sides, now we are close to $50 a week for lunch. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0I cut that almost in half when I started packing my own lunches. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0A big container of mixed greens at Kroger is about four dollars, and it lasts me two weeks. I change up my toppings a lot but it\u2019s easy to keep those cheap and simple. A couple fresh vegetables, some canned olives or beans, basically anything can be a topping. Overall I now spend maybe $20-$30 a week on lunches. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0My last tip is to find three to four lunches you like or want to try and just make them. You can branch out once you\u2019re comfortable. Pinterest has almost limitless possibilities when it comes to pack lunches, and I will even be sharing some of my own in some upcoming articles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cerridwyn Kuykendall<\/strong>
\nAssociate Editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0There is a running joke that college students live off day old pizza, Ramen noodles and free food from random events around campus. \u00a0 \u00a0Now for some people, that\u2019s the life. Pizza three meals in a row and the perfect excuse, \u201cI\u2019m in college, I\u2019ll have time to eat healthy later.\u201d That is perfectly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":18014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2102,2108,2109,3],"tags":[1418,2007,2319,49,1400,2141,1384],"class_list":["post-17961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-life","category-food","category-opinion","category-tartan-news","tag-campus-life","tag-cerridwyn-kuykendall","tag-eating-healthy","tag-food","tag-health","tag-online-exclusive","tag-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-4FH","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Farmers-market-produce.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17961"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18021,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961\/revisions\/18021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}