{"id":693,"date":"2013-11-12T19:14:17","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T03:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/?p=693"},"modified":"2015-03-12T11:18:52","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T18:18:52","slug":"the-quagmire-of-our-dining-halls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/2013\/11\/12\/the-quagmire-of-our-dining-halls\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quagmire of our Dining Halls"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re anything like me, a long day of studying is always alleviated by going to 5cdining.com and choosing a dining hall to eat in. With choices like Taco Tuesday, Mongolian Wok, and A.M in the P.M, this can be quite the ordeal, and is only exacerbated if you\u2019re going to eat with a group of friends.\u00a0 Despite the excitement with which I enter the dining hall, I am sad to say that enthusiasm is often dampened when I actually place food on my plate. Why? It is because of the judgment passed in the dining halls on a woman\u2019s food choices.<\/p>\n

More than once, I\u2019ve noticed the subtle glances when a woman has multiple plates of food or a heavily laden green box. But the glances aren\u2019t the only judgment passed. I myself have had a professor inform my friend and me that our choice of pasta was not very healthy and that \u201csoon we would not have the grace of a fast metabolism\u201d. Another friend of mine has had the staff at the dining hall praise her for being one of the few girls who actually fill up her green box.<\/p>\n

We(or at least with the people I’ve eaten with) constantly feel the need to justify our food choices to each other. I’ve heard statements like \u201cOh\u2026I know this is bad for me but I\u2019ll eat it\u201d, \u201cI\u2019m such a fatty for eating this\u201d, and \u201cI should be eating salad but I\u2019m going to just take this pizza\u201d countless times. These statements are often followed by laughs and general assent over the person\u2019s \u201cpoor\u201d food choice. This kind of group reinforcement of self-justification is harmful and can make an individual insecure over their image and choices.<\/p>\n

In fact, most women make very few of these so-called \u201cpoor\u201d food choices. Many stick with diets to lose weight in spite of being healthy. Why do men often eat more and (I would argue) less healthy food than women but rarely (almost never) feel self-conscious and justify their actions? It is common to explain a boy\u2019s large appetite by saying that he is \u201cgrowing\u201d. But girls are growing and maturing, too, and despite their slower metabolism, also require a wholesome diet.<\/p>\n

It is one thing to enforce healthy eating choices, but another to have to justify a person\u2019s desire to eat a certain food. \u00a0Women should not feel the need to explain their food choices, nor should other people comment on these choices. Eating healthy is an important and vital aspect of an individual\u2019s well-being, but it should not be something that peers and others can impose. Ideally, no judgment, both positive and negative, should be passed in the dining hall. No one should be commended for eating a salad or grimaced at for grabbing a side of fries. I should be able to pick between pizza or quinoa based on what I truly want and not by the judgments of other people.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Aish Subramanian\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Staff Blogger Scr ’16<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  If you\u2019re anything like me, a long day of studying is always alleviated by going to 5cdining.com and choosing a dining hall to eat in. With choices like Taco Tuesday, Mongolian Wok, and A.M in the P.M, this can be quite the ordeal, and is only exacerbated if you\u2019re going to eat with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,243,238,33,1,30],"tags":[257,258,61],"class_list":["post-693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-around-campus","category-blog","category-health","category-perspective","category-uncategorized","category-well-being","tag-dining-halls","tag-eating-habits","tag-food"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2013\/11\/photo-26-150x1501.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}