This is an ugly month for college students. Late March marks roughly six months since we've seen a full sunny week. It's been roughly half a year since we haven't had to intern all day, go to class all night and then write papers to the pale flicker of late-night infomercials. We can't remember our last square meal, let alone the last time we've had a chance to cook something nutritious.
Pounded by several months of endless food and drinking holidays, our beer guts are testing the limits of our stretchy "fat" jeans. And unless your break found you in some exotic locale and/or tanning bed, your skin has most likely gotten progressively paler, your complexion duller and your general visage a little more sallow since September.
The ravages of college do a number on one's body, health and physical appearance. Cheap beer and pizza can only sustain you for so long until you begin to contract diseases you had previously only heard of while playing Oregon Trail. I've heard of at least three cases of college kids getting scurvy from subsisting on diets of peanut butter, toast and whatever is lying in the lounge at 4 a.m.
A friend mentioned to me recently that she craved carrots more than anything. When fresh food - the stuff your mom and the Naked Chef say is supposed to be the base of any diet - becomes a rare luxury, you know that heart surgery at 30 is well within the realm of possibility.
It's no way to live, but we have little choice, primarily because of the extreme inaccessibility of fresh, good food for the typical AU student. For grocery stores within reach, there is Whole Foods, where you can get something healthy, support organic farming and save a humpback whale by buying a box of cereal and paying $9 for a banana. Not so much.
Safeway would be a good option, as long as it weren't located in the black hole between Friendship Heights and Tenleytown, a complete pain to get to if you're not shuttle-accessible. For those of us who live closer to Macomb Street, there is the Giant, which ironically is the size of a studio-apartment bathroom. What's worse, its selection resembles that of a Soviet grocery store, making it a crapshoot as to whether there will be milk if you go on Tuesday, and it quizzically attracts the most unattractive mix of shoppers I have ever seen. So, that's out.
If you're on campus, don't have a meal plan and need to grab a quick bite between classes, the options are similarly limited. McDonald's and the Tavern will turn your insides into a grease-slicked colon-cancer party, and there are only so many Subway sandwiches you can eat before you begin to wince anytime someone says the name Jared. The panini place in MGC is better than the faux Chipotle it replaced, but it doesn't really offer anything besides more mayonnaise, fried chips and poor-quality meat. And the salad place has the same salads you got sick of eating back when you were on a meal plan, as lettuce is TDR's only recognizable vegetable.
Something should be done so that our entire student body can stop looking like fat, malnourished zombies every winter and spring. Perhaps we could get a student-accessible fridge system so that off-campus people could bring food from home. Maybe the Eagle's Nest could diversify its options to include a few vegetables and more fruit - and charge less than our firstborn for them. Until then, some of us can look forward to a summer spent at home detoxing, while seniors look forward to an impending life of poverty marked by a diet of rice and canned beans. Even then, it's still an improvement over that mysterious curry concoction from Megabytes.
Olga Khazan is a senior in the School of Public Affairs and a social commentary columnist for The Eagle.
