Are British students getting fitter or fatter?

One recent report claims today’s students are super healthy, another that they are piling on the pounds. Which is correct?

They say you are what you eat. At no point in my freshers’ week do I recall eating a lazy fast-food addict, who drank heavily and thought exercising was something priests did to rid people of demons; but then I am an unreliable witness – I was mostly inebriated.

A recent survey showed that 46% of freshers miss their mum’s cooking more than anything else from home, and it’s not hard to imagine why. My attempts at cooking in my own student days would inevitably produce unsightly failures; inducing indigestion after I was forced to stuff them down at a lightning pace to hide the evidence.


However a survey of 11,000 students across Europe, conducted by controversial health-shake makers Herbalife, shows there may be a new wave of healthier students at universities who have wised up to the advantages of eating well and staying fit.

According to the research, students now believe they are healthier than the non-student population. Almost three-quarters of UK students say they are eating three good meals a day and 72% classify themselves as healthy (compared to 67% of non-students).


The survey also points out that 75% of students say they exercising three or more times a week. That’s more often than the average non-student – and three times a week more than me.


But hold your healthy horses for just one second. Before we all dance naked around a bonfire of Chicken Cottage boxes – in celebration of the dawning of the age of salad-scoffing students – perhaps we should consider a nugget of information from the eight-spicy-wings-for-a-pound of journalism that is the Daily Mail. It recently reported that eight in 10 students are putting on weight while at university.


The source of its claim is a UK-based weight loss company called Slimming World. It confusingly runs its tagline “know you’re amazing” alongside a press release that essentially says “you’re getting fat”. (To clarify, you are statistically more likely to be the latter than the former.)

Despite its dubious motives, poor sense of irony, and survey size of just 1,000, I am tempted to believe its claim.


But why? How can both of these fine sources of information be correct? Surely healthy-eating, exercise-addicted students can’t possibly be piling on the pounds? Are they just deluding themselves about their lifestyle choices?

Well, not necessarily. If your read your beloved Herbalife survey closely enough, there are crumbs of consensus to be found. One notable point is that students are eating rather more than normal humans: over 30% of students admit to snacking constantly (one of the main causes of obesity, according to a recent study), compared to just 16% of non-students.


Then there are the 14% of students eating more than three meals a day (I salute you – elevenzies is definitely a thing), significantly more than the 6% of proper people who do the same.


And lest we forget, there is the booze. I have previously shown that students don’t drink as much as their reputation would have you believe, but no doubt those extra few vodkas and pints aren’t helping the calorie count.

Where does this leave us? We know students reckon they are healthy, and are exercising regularly. But some also admit to snacking or eating too many meals. And most say they are putting on weight. So are today’s students getting fitter or not? It would certainly be a shame if you read all the way through this article and I didn’t have an answer for you.

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