TAMMY ISOLA / Scroll

New survey reveals fattest and fittest colleges

Dallin Moon MOO00004@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

It’s a Sunday afternoon in Rexburg. Kitchen tables across campus are topped with buttery mashed potatoes, mom’s famous lasagna and frothy root beer. An audible ‘amen’ is heard and a flurry of energy erupts which can only be compared to the opening kick off of the Super Bowl.

At campuses across the nation, empty pizza boxes litter dorm rooms. Caffeine fuels the honor students’ late night cram sessions. Forty percent binge drink, according to Harvard School of Public Health. It seems the college years are about feeding the gut as much as feeding the brain. 

Men’s Fitness magazine and Princeton Review, a leading organization for tracking students’ interests, teamed up and surveyed 10,000 students across 660 college campuses. Students were asked 18 questions about weight gain/loss, exercise, bad habits, sleep and campus facilities.

So who’s winning the war? Which colleges are helping their students take care of their health? And which student bodies just let their personal bodies go, piling on pound after pound?

After an entire summer of analyzing spreadsheets and crunching numbers, Men’s Fitness magazine reported the results in its October issue.

BYU topped the list at No. 1 for the fittest campus in America.

“I’m not surprised,” said Darcy Anderson, a senior from Hayden, Idaho. “The Church [of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] teaches us to take care of our bodies.”

“The fact that BYU is at the head of the class isn’t so surprising, given that most students adopt a wholesome Mormon lifestyle when they enroll there. That means no caffeine, no alcohol, and little (if any) smoking,” Men’s Fitness reported.

Coming in at No. 1 for the fattest campus in America is the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. “The culture here is very ‘laissez les bons temps rouler,’ or let the good times roll,” said Erik Olson, lead researcher of the survey.

Are students healthier now than they were 20 years ago?

“No way,” said Jonathan Waitman M.D., a clinical nutrition professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. “Computers, video games, not walking to school, fast food. … I think a lot of kids have learned bad habits.”

So while the average Sunday meal may not make it into the South Beach Diet, BYU-Idaho students seem to have the spirit and facilities to burn off that extra dessert brownie.