For a lot of students, it is sometimes easier to eat snacks, fast food, or grab pizza at the dining hall rather than cooking or choosing vegetables. You might say to yourself, well it is not a big deal to eat unhealthily, but you are wrong. Eating unhealthy food has short- and long-term consequences for your body and health. You don’t have to feel guilty, just know the risks of eating an excessive amount of it, so that you can avoid it.

Here, you will learn about how food affects your body, the diseases you can develop because of it and how to change your habits to make sure you stay in good health!

What do we mean by unhealthy diet?

But first, what is an unhealthy diet? According to Audrey Merceron, a French dietitian and nutritionist, “…it is an unbalanced diet with an overconsumption of ultra-processed products, eaten quickly without listening to the signals of the body.”

If your diet is high in sugar, in salt, and in fat, also with low-fibers food, and accompanied with high-sugar drinks, then you are consuming components of a bad diet, and this behavior can lead to serious consequences.

But it is not only this that will lead to an unhealthy diet. If you are under eating, overeating or not diversifying your food options, it can also lead to problems.

You can find here a website referencing the differences between healthy and unhealthy food.

How does a bad diet impact your body and your health?

Now that we know what is unhealthy, you might wonder how it can have effects on your body. Because of high consumption of fat ingest, our body can react in different ways, and even develop diseases. According to Jordan Bougeard, French dietitian and nutritionist, “There are a good number of them, including metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular diseases (myocardial infarction, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, stroke, high blood pressure).”

But this is only a partial list of the diseases you can develop, according to the Government of South Australia, poor nutrition can also lead to cancer, eating disorders, dental problems, depression, etc.

Let’s explain it more to you!

One of the most common conditions is hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, it affects your body’s arteries by having a blood pressure higher than normal.

Another effect on the arteries is high cholesterol, because of the high consumption of fat, the cholesterol accumulates in your arteries and thus reduce their sizes.

Those two diseases, associated with a high consumption of sodium, increase the risks of heart disease and strokes. On average, Americans consume more sodium than what is recommended: 3,400 mg a day rather than 2,300.

Also, because of this diet, you can develop type 2 diabetes (although it might not only be because of this), meaning that your body secretes less insulin to regulate blood sugar, and it is less effective. Then, you will have to follow a lifelong treatment since there is no cure for this disease, and if not treated it can lead to other diseases later.

Then, eating unhealthily increases the risks to develop 13 cancers, such as endometrial cancer, breast cancer, or colorectal cancer.

And, because of the quantity of sugar and salt you are eating, your teeth can be severely damaged, until tooth decay and cavity.

Having an unhealthy diet can sometimes lead to eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia because of the bad eating habits and how it can change your body and your perception of it.  

To learn more information about this, you can read the article published by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Also, the World Health Organization reminds us, among other interesting things in this article, that “today, one-third of the world's population is affected by at least one form of malnutrition. More than 40% of men and women (2.2 billion people) are currently overweight or obese, and unhealthy diets are linked to at least eight million deaths per year”. Making the problem of poor nutrition not only a global one, but also one with serious consequences for a large part of the population.

Finally, eating unhealthy food can also have an influence on your body, apart from getting sick. Having a bad diet can impact your sleep, your energy, your ability to memorize, the way you look, your hair, your skin, your nails, etc. Food impacts everything, and if you want to learn more about those effects, you can check it out here.

Now, you know what some risks are of having a bad diet and how your body can react to it. But you might ask yourself if you, as students, are more exposed to those risks or if it is more dangerous for you. So, now leading to our next point:

Do students have a higher risk of having an unhealthy diet and developing diseases?

As the Arizona State University is saying, because of a lack of time, money, and knowledge in cooking, many young people, especially students, struggle to have a healthy diet.

Indeed, because of classes, work, practice, homework, and other responsibilities, students don’t take the time to eat properly or to cook, and they go for the easiest option: junk food. Also, because they rarely have much money, choosing to eat fast food is the cheapest option.

And as Hilal Elver is saying on Civil Eats, “Today’s food systems are dominated by industrial food production and processing” and “large food corporations flooding the global market with nutrient poor yet energy-dense foods that are relatively inexpensive”. Essentially, because of the companies creating industrial and transformed food, that are cheaper and easier to cook, students go for those products, that don’t have enough nutrients for your body and are not natural and thus dangerous for your body.

But be aware that the risks are also present even when being young, and we should not minimize them.  

The diseases that can occur are the same as those mentioned earlier, but, as Audrey Merceron said, “the younger the imbalances, the greater the health risks, because the years of imbalance are more important”. The problem is that these consumption habits become established over time, and it becomes difficult to change them afterwards.

You are not facing more risks when having an unhealthy diet as a student, but because you are starting it young, the diseases can occur earlier, and it can be complicated to change your diet if you have made unhealthy eating a habit. That is why, the sooner you change your unhealthy habits, the better for your health. We have some tips that can help you create better eating habits.