Healthy Eating
Report by Helena B.
America is popular for its fast food culture with fast food restaurants all over the place. This is not only a cliché; there is Cookout, Taco Bell, Waffle House, Buffalo Wild Wings, Domino’s and much more less than ten minutes away from Campus. In order to stay fit and healthy you have to be a little disciplined no matter if you have a meal plan (you pay a certain sum of money and can eat for free all over campus) or not.
The meal plan on campus
If you take advantage of a meal plan, the healthiest way to go would be Dub’s, a dining hall on campus that provides a huge salad bar with different kinds of salad, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, olives, artichokes, mushrooms, kidney beans, etc. If you would like to have a warm meal, Dub’s provides rice, different sorts of meat and vegetables (often a little bit oily). Wagoner Hall also has a salad bar with basic stuff and you can have apples, oranges or bananas for takeaway. I didn’t have the meal plan at all but was often invited to eat on campus by other students and if they are all eating burgers, fries, or sandwiches, it takes a lot to stay with your healthy food. But, exceptions the one or the other day absolutely do not do any harm to your health and fitness.
Grocery shopping
If you don’t have the meal plan, you have to go grocery shopping. The cheapest but most exhausting (because it is so huge) grocery store is Walmart. Lowe’s Foods or Food Lion are smaller and nicer but definitely more expensive. After one semester I got a pretty good overview about what kind of food is not only healthy but also affordable. Carrots, bananas, avocados or salad are about the same price than in Germany. For those who like to eat proteins, eggs are always a good and affordable option. Milk is cheap if you take it in XXL. Yoghurt, cheese and meat are much more expensive than in Germany. In Wilmington, I was never able to buy a package of sliced cheese for less than $5. However, Aldi is about to come to Wilmington, offering cheaper and also more German products. At the moment, the nearest Aldi is about 50 minutes away. However, it is definitely worth going there every month to buy basics such as potatoes, onions, noodles, or rice.
For those of you who have some space left in their luggage, you should think of bringing shrink-wrapped dark bread (from Aldi, Rewe, or Edeka), tea, coffee, apple cider, dry yeast, Dr. Oetker pudding, and German chocolate. Although not all of these groceries are healthy, you will not be able to buy them here or at least they would not be of the same quality as in Germany.
