International students struggle to adapt to American diet while craving food from home
By Emily Chaiet
It’s time for lunch, and Patricia Song, is staring at her food options. She sees carb filled entrees lined up in the hot bar of the dining hall at Northwestern University, like a baked potato, which in her opinion, is not a substantial meal. Coming from Seoul, South Korea, Song is used to meals filled with vegetables and meat, making it hard for her to adjust to the American food provided at Northwestern University.
“There are sometimes where I feel like this is pretty good food, and I would eat it, and the amount I would put on my dish would be enough,” Song said. “But there are some other days where the food is so different than what I would normally eat at home, and it doesn’t feel like a meal. It feels like a snack.”
Since switching from her Korean diet full of vegetables and kimchi (a traditional Korean side dish made of spicy pickled cabbage) to an American diet full of starch and fried foods, Song has noticed that she has gained weight and that her skin has worsened. She said she never suffered from any form of acne until coming to the United States, and attributes this to the greasy dishes that are a staple of every American college dining hall.
According to a study by Claudia Vadeboncoeur, Nicholas Townsend and Charlie Foster, almost two-thirds of freshman students gain weight when coming to college. Yet, international students suffer an additional difficulty, for they have to adjust to a new diet, new portion sizes and a new country. According to a research study conducted by Western Kentucky University Professor Grace K. Lartey, 91 percent of international students believe keeping a healthy diet is important, yet many faced too many barriers to maintain a healthy lifestyle. About 54 percent perceived lack of ethnic foods as a barrier to healthy eating.
Despite the health problems that they may face, Lartey’s research revealed that about 56 percent of international students reported not to have used any of the on-campus health services within the past year.
“The participation of the international students was a little bit lower because in their minds, the nutritionist has a very limited concept of their foods because the nutritionist is usually someone who is an American,” said Lartey, who teaches public health. “They thought, ‘why should I even go to this person who has a limited knowledge of the foods that I want to eat?’”
Even though Northwestern has an international student population of 794 undergraduates as of fall 2017, it does not offer health or nutrition services specifically for international students, and neither do other schools with even higher populations. While Northwestern’s health care services are available to all students, there are no specific programs to help international students adjust to a new diet or healthcare system.
With time, Northwestern has tried to accommodate the international student diet by offering international dishes, such as punjabi chicken and stir fry, into the dining halls on campus. Yet, Northwestern dietician Lela Fausze said the biggest problem she has seen international students struggle with is portion size.
“A lot of students try to navigate things on their own, and then they’ll come to me and say that they gained weight and ask what they can do differently,” Fausze said. “We might look at education around different nutrients that you’re going to see commonly with American food or certain choices that they make that they’re not used to eating at home.”
Northwestern freshman Fiona Sha from Shanghai, China said one of the biggest adjustments she had to deal with was the change in diet. She said that in China, most of the food is boiled and steamed while most American food is fried and covered in sauce. Despite this, she has not yet felt like she needs to visit a nutritionist or health care service.
Before going to school in the U.S., Sha did not count the calories that she consumed, but she has now become very aware, even downloading an app to count her calorie intake.
Fiona Sha eats at Northwestern’s Allison Dining Hall. She said the dining hall food is not as healthy as food from her home country, China.
“When you come into the dining hall and see all of those signs about calorie counts, you’re suddenly aware like hey I should probably count my calories,” Sha said. “American food is very high in calories and it’s really fattening, so I feel like it would be better for me to regulate my calorie intake.”
Sophomore Anushka Jain has also admitted to gaining weight since coming to the United States from Bangalore, India.
Jain said she had to drastically change her diet because of the high fat content in American foods. She said she is no longer a vegetarian because most American vegetarian options are only carbs.
“I wasn’t really getting any nutrients, whereas with Indian food, you have cooked vegetables and beans and lentils,” Jain said. “In India, every restaurant has a lot of vegetarian options.”
Jain said she tries to go to Devon Avenue, a street in Chicago filled with South Asian shops and grocery stores, to find food from home. However, she has to pay for an Uber to get there.
According to Lartey’s research, 43 percent of international students see transportation difficulties as a barrier to healthy eating and 15 percent see difficulty going to grocery stores as a barrier.
Lartey said that after her research was published, Western Kentucky University improved their transportation system to take international students to the mall and grocery stores that they needed to buy food at. She said fixing the transportation system has had the biggest impact on student diet.
Even though Northwestern has a larger percentage of international students on campus than Western Kentucky University, it does not provide an on campus transportation service to places such as Chinatown.
Sha said that she has only grocery shopped in Chinatown once because it is too far away and inconvenient to travel to. She said if Northwestern provided a transportation system there, she would go more frequently.
“Going to Chinatown just makes me really happy in general because there’s amazing food and a lot of entertainment activities that are really Chinese and remind me of home,” she said. “I wish it was easier to go more often.”
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Song said that she cannot find one of her favorite foods — sundubu, a soft tofu that is put in soup — unless she goes to H Mart, a popular Korean supermarket located over 7 miles away from Northwestern.
Song continues to struggle with her diet because she lives on campus, where she cannot find the foods from home that she craves, she said.
“I should have considered the fact that my diet would change so much, but I only thought about making friends or adjusting to school and academics and being far away from home,” Song said. “I definitely did think that I would miss home cooked food, but I didn’t realize that I wouldn’t have access to a lot of the food that I eat back at home for the whole year.”