The Seahawk

Issue date: 4/2/09 Section: Lifestyles

At Wagoner Dining Hall, students were encouraged to have balanced meals that included one-half fruits and veggies, one-fourth grains and one-fourth protein. If students rose to the challenge, they were given a free T-shirt as part of the UNCW Health Promotion National Nutrition Month 2009. The T-shirt read "The New American Plate" and pictured a plate with such proportions.

The Health Promotion newsletter offers advice on how to incorporate eating healthy into our daily lives. Health Promotion Peer Educator, Lindsay N. Husch, said, "UNCW Health Promotion supports the 80/20 rule. Try to be conscious of what you eat and choose healthy options 80 percent of the time. What should you eat the other 20 percent of the time? Anything that makes your taste buds sweet, but remember, portion control!"

Incorporating a healthy appetite while eating at Wag can be tricky. When walking in, you first encounter a plethora of delectable sweets. Once you brave your way past the sweets and make it to the actual kitchen area, you are bombarded with an array of pizza and bread sticks. Then, as you venture to the back line, burgers are usually readily available with a surplus amount of French fries, ready to go. So how healthy is UNCW's dining hall?

Nutrition information is available at http://www.campusdish.com/en-us/CSSE/UNCWilmington. Click on "Menus" at the top of the page and it will bring you to a weekly and day-by-day account of Wagoner's options. The categories are divided up into comfort, exhibition, grill, pizza, sandwich shoppe and vegetarian zone.

Is Wag helping students to maintain a healthy lifestyle or just hurting them? The average calorie intake is about 2,500 calories per day. Wagoner offers a deli style pastrami sandwich that by itself is 2624.27 calories. One slice of cheese pizza is 365.64 calories and 4 oz. of french fries are 411.49 calories.

The comfort section offers lower calorie meals such as 4 oz. of Honey Glazed Steak Ham for 242.87 calories. The issue is that students do not only eat one thing and go. The buffet style makes everything tempting and easy to grab.

The salad and fruit bar are not as prominent as other food options and can be easily bypassed on the way in. Students could simply substitute fruit for fries, but the temptation is still there and difficult to overcome. UNCW does, however, offer a Registered Dietician at (910) 962-7621 and a Health Educator at (910) 962-7513.

"I always knew Wag was bad for you, but hearing the calorie proportions makes me not even want to go there. I'm just as well off going to McDonald's," freshman Ashley Christensen said.

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