Image Credit: Courtesy of Luisa Brimble for Unsplash
Whether students are eating healthy to stay fit, fuel their bodies or combat the Marathon Deli fries they consumed last night, healthy food is a necessity in College Park.
It is easy to fall into habits of eating unhealthy fast foods like Five Guy’s, McDonald’s and Domino’s because it is convenient and cheap, but there are resources around campus that tend to these healthy needs.
For breakfast, the Hall and the Board and Brew both offer healthy options. The Hall, located behind The Hotel, has healthy options on the menu such as the Egg White Omelet for $12 with “spinach, roasted mushroom, goat cheese, dill, really good olive oil and tater tots.”
Board and Brew has many healthy breakfast options. Sophomore kinesiology major Sam Gelb says her go-to meal at Board and Brew is “The Healthy Egg” sandwich for $6.50 with pesto, egg white, mozzarella and tomatoes.
“It’s guilt free. It fills me up, and I feel fueled for my classes during the day,” Gelb said.
For lunch, there are many convenient options, such as CAVA, Sweetgreen and Saladworks. All these places are in the nearby College Park area. They offer build-your-own-salads and bowls that hit all the important food groups with greens, grains and veggies. CAVA provides a nutritional calculator that breaks down the calories, carbs and fats in each ingredient.
Sweetgreen and Saladwords are both customizable salad chains. Tennis star Naomi Osaka recently partnered with Sweetgreen. Osaka's bowl is made with warm quinoa, baby spinach, cilantro, tomato, tortilla chips, raw carrots, goat cheese, blackened chicken, lime-cilantro jalapeno vinaigrette, avocado and Sweetgreen hot sauce.
Saladworks is located in Adele H. Stamp Student Union for easy student access. Students can even use Terrapin Express money on their University ID to pay for it. These customizable salads have a wide variety of protein and vegetables for students, such as grilled chicken, shrimp, steak, roasted broccoli and roasted brussel sprouts.
For dinner, Molly Visco, agribusiness major and the president of Alpha Epsilon Phi (AEPHI), recommends Sardi’s on Baltimore Avenue.
“They have amazing chicken and sides, we ordered it for the whole sorority house and everyone was stuffed from the large portions,” Visco said.
Frankie Florman, the Sunday Night Dinner chair for AEPHI and the one responsible for ordering outside food for the house, said they purchased the oven roasted chicken breast, brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes from Sardi’s for the event.
There are many more options for healthy eating in College Park. There is The Spot, College Park Grill, Looney’s, Seoulspice and more. If you are finding difficulty consuming your desired diet, there are resources at the UMD health center that provide dietician appointments and peer nutrition coaching for students.