Consumer Reports’ Ideas of Healthy Food Choices for College Students Is Way Off

Consumer Reports, perhaps you should stick to recommendations on household products and cars, and not venture into the food category if the recent piece on tips to keep college students healthy is a representation of what you’re going to suggest.

A piece published online yesterday, entitled ‘Healthy Foods for College Students to Eat‘ was so far off, I wondered if it was a farce; but it was not.  Desperate, I scanned the article, looking for fine print to disclose that this was really part of an ad for Kellogg’s or Kraft…but there was none.

The exhaustive list included:

Frozen waffles
Cereal
Snack bars
Greek yogurt
Frozen pizza
Frozen entrees
Beef jerky

Not a mention of a single veggie or even fruit anywhere to be seen.  No fresh protein (I’d hardly count commercially available jerky as a good option).  Not even a mention of drinking water?

What on earth?

So if we pretend these things are good, healthy options, I suppose we can also pretend that the ‘freshman fifteen’ phenomenon, which is now more likely the ‘freshman thirty’ isn’t happening?  Just hop on the scale and laugh it off, assuming it needs to be calibrated because it’s off and be on our merry, frozen-pizza eating way?

Speechless.