"Fooooood fight!" These two words launched one of the best known cafeteria food fights ever filmed—it’s a scene from Animal House, a 1978 campus comedy. While this food fight still makes people laugh, the film footage unfortunately solidified many of the negative stereotypes about college food and students’ unhealthy eating habits that we still hold today. Students are labeled as mindless overeaters who load up on junk food and unhealthy snacks and are believed to be clueless when it comes to healthy eating. Since Animal House was filmed, we continue to be bombarded with images and messages that students are hopeless eaters.

It’s true that many students have difficulty moderating their eating, even those without clinical eating disorders. Studies on "normal" college eating habits highlight the unhealthy nature of many college students’ diets.1 Studies suggest between 30 to 70 percent of college students engage in "disordered eating habits."

Disordered eating among college students can include weight preoccupation, binge eating, body dissatisfaction, obsessive focus on calories and fat, unhealthy eating, and compensatory behavior such as obsessive exercise and vomiting. While some eating problems don’t meet the full diagnostic criteria for anorexia and bulimia, they are a concern and warrant attention. "Disordered eating" and subclinical eating disorders/dieting can be distressing enough to interfere with academic work, health, relationships, and social life.

Concerns about body image, body shape, body size, and weight control are well documented among certain college populations such as athletes, sorority women, and counseling clients.2 International students are another population that could be at risk. A study found that international students gained an average of three pounds and their body fat rose about 5 percent after only twenty weeks of school.3