Daily Camera Healthy, Fast and Cheap Article

Posted by Seth on December 4, 2007 under Food, Nutrition, Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

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Good eats for students

Study-break candy bar at 3 a.m. Double-shot latte for the caffeine at 8. Fast food for lunch. Pizza and beer for dinner.

At its worst, the college diet is a fruit-and-vegetable-free zone with fat, carbs and sugar as the major food groups.

Seth Braun wants to change that. The Boulder nutrition counselor and former Naropa University student has written a cookbook, “Healthy, Fast and Cheap: The Ultimate College Cookbook,” with the aim of improving the often-questionable college diet.

“In college is where people pick up major lifetime habits,” Braun says, adding that the food habits students acquire often don’t serve them well. “There’s no nutrient density and (there’s lots of) processed food. They’re really pushing their bodies to the edge of what they’re capable of.

“It sets up a habit and a pattern that can contribute to a lifetime of ill health.”

Braun envisions a diet with whole grains and beans as the centerpiece, with plenty of fruits and vegetables. But he also recognizes the constraints of college life: not enough time and not enough money.

He’s got a few ingenious solutions, however: soaking steel-cut oatmeal overnight, for example, so it can be cooked quickly. Or asking a natural foods store for produce just past its prime. He got that idea from a roommate.

“She would come home with bag after bag of apples, melons, mangoes and papaya,” he says. “We’d take an hour and fill up the freezer with chopped-up vegetables and fruits for $10. We’d have smoothies for weeks.”

Lisa High, who owns Essential Nutrition in Boulder, agrees that a little creativity and planning can make the difference in a student diet.

“If students don’t mind buying brown rice from the bulk bin at the health food stores, that’s a cheap way to get some really good whole food, vitamins and minerals,” she says. “It requires cooking time, but you could get a rice cooker. You turn it on and it does the cooking for you. You can make enough to last for a week.”

She suggests mixing it with various sauces and vegetables, or with beans and salsa for a burrito. Other grains are similarly adaptable.

Braun is particularly fond of quinoa, another super-cheap bulk-bin source of nutrition. He likes to cook it with kale, an antioxidant powerhouse.

High agrees that nutrition is particularly important for students.

“When you have to use so much brain power, there are so many nutrients involved,” she says. “When you eat a balanced diet, it’s a lot easier to perform mentally.”

Braun, who studied at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York, used classic cookbooks such as “Diet for a Small Planet” for inspiration, tweaking the content for a college audience.

He says his own experiences as a student — he once lived on a $150-a-month food budget in San Francisco — have made him well-aware of the difficulties students face.

“I got a thrill out of the challenge of how to eat really well on a budget, ” he says.

The cookbook also suggests the minimal equipment needed to stock a kitchen, along with vegetarian and non-vegetarian recipes.

Braun got the idea for the cookbook after he graduated. He was the doing morning exercises outlined in “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path Toward Higher Creativity.” The book called for writing three pages of stream of consciousness on what you would love to create.

“I wanted to create this cool-looking, funky little book,” he says. “Then I realized it was kind of a good idea.”

He sells the book on his Web site, www.healthyfastandcheap.com, and hopes eventually to sell it to high school and college groups to use as a fund-raiser.

“Nutrition has always been a passion,” he says.

Contact Staff Writer Cindy

Sutter at (303) 473-1335 or e-mail sutterc@dailycamera.com