Campus Nutrition

Why is the “freshmen 15” phenomenon so common?

Taylor Thomas — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 14:49:18 +0000

Why is the “freshmen 15” phenomenon so common? Taylor Thomas Tue, 11/04/2025 - 09:49

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Do not schedule eight AM classes. Communicate with your roommate. Wash your bedding regularly. Incoming college students are offered numerous pieces of advice before stepping onto campus. Arguably, one of the most common is to beware of the “freshman 15.” But why is weight gain among first-year students so universal that it has earned such a notorious reputation?

An George Mason Ģ��AV interdisciplinary research team led by Y. Alicia Hong, professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy who studies mobile and wearable technologies, found that the college environment lends itself to habits that increase food intake and subsequent weight gain.

“Social and environmental factors are key determinants of eating behavior,” said Hong. "College students are affected by the eating environment, especially where they eat and whom they eat with. Our research found that they consume more calories when eating in groups or formal dining settings."

Over the course of four weeks, college students self-recorded daily eating behaviors, environment, and mood and stress levels using a mobile app. App-logged responses indicated participants eat more when in groups of two or more and in locations such as dining halls or restaurants. Conversely, food intake was less when alone or at home.

College students are unaware of their eating habits, findings suggest. Analysis revealed that students’ perceptions of their food consumption did not align with the caloric intake logged. Factors related to gender and emotion also contributed to the complex nature of dietary behavior.

“College students’ eating behaviors are complex, with individual, interpersonal, and environmental factors interacting to influence dietary intake. This research underscores the importance of context in dietary intervention and incorporating digital tools for dietary assessment,” said Hong.

The research team included Distinguished Ģ��AV Professor Larry Cheskin in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies, Associate Professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy Hong Xue, and George Mason alumna Jo-Vivian Yu, BS Health Adminstration '21, MS Health Informatics '22.

The Dynamics of Eating Behaviors and Eating Environment in College Students: Discrepancies Between App-Tracked Dietary Intake and Self-Perceived Food Consumption was published in mHealth on October 29, 2025. The study was funded by the George Mason Ģ��AV College of Public Health Pilot Grant (PI: YAH).

About the researchers

Y. Alicia Hong is a professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy at George Mason Ģ��AV. She is an expert in behavioral interventions with a research interest in the intersection of health services delivery and consumer informatics. Her work primarily explores chronic care and self-care solutions through innovative digital technologies, aiming to improve patient-centered outcomes and enhance healthcare accessibility. Hong’s research focuses on implementation and dissemination science, and leveraging digital technologies to enhance health services delivery.

Larry Cheskin is a distinguished university professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies and adjunct professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Cheskin has dedicated his career to research, education, and program building to enhance people’s diets and combat obesity. He founded the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center, a multidisciplinary clinical research and treatment program. His work has impacted the problem of obesity through innovative treatment programs, and in community-based participatory research among the underserved in urban areas. He also developed mHealth tailored to the behavioral characteristics of the recipient to combat obesity.

Hong Xue is an associate professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy. He currently serves as the Chair of the Tobacco Free Alliance of Virginia. Xue conducts interdisciplinary research in public health and in particular, integrates economics, nutrition, epidemiology, systems science, health informatics and machine learning in studying multilevel mechanisms and factors (e.g., from policy to behavior) related to obesity and non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs), and tobacco use. Dr. Xue's research has been widely published in top journals and featured in national media, contributing significantly to both domestic and global NCD control efforts.

Jo-Vivian Yu holds a Master of Science in Data Analytics and a Bachelor of Science in Health Informatics from George Mason Ģ��AV. Her academic and research background reflects a strong interdisciplinary foundation at the intersection of data science, technology, and public health. She has contributed to multiple peer-reviewed studies focused on health behavior and population health, using digital tools and data analytics to investigate the impact of social and environmental factors on health outcomes.

Thumbnail photo by Rosalind Chang via unsplash.

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College of Public Health

Nutrition Department Hosts Eating Healthy on a Budget

John Brandon Cantrell — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 14:40:15 +0000

Nutrition Department Hosts Eating Healthy on a Budget John Brandon C… Tue, 03/08/2022 - 09:40

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Department of Nutrition and Food Studies

Nutrition Events

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Kerri LaCharite, PhD

In collaboration with the College’s Office of Student Affairs, the Department of Nutrition teaches students to make a homemade healthy and delicious meal.

Bacon. Ranch. Chicken. “Yum” for many college students, but do they know how to make a healthy meal from these ingredients? Students who attended the Eating Healthy on a Budget event now do. The event, hosted by the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies and the College’s Office of Student Affairs, was open to students enrolled in Nutrition Department as well as non-nutrition students and was held in the Nutrition Kitchen, located on the first floor of Peterson Hall.

Adjunct professor and Mason Master of Nutrition alumna Jaianna Johnson taught students in two cooking events to create a chicken, bacon, ranch bowl with brown rice. In addition, she demonstrated how to make a kale salad that even kale-skeptics would like. Assistant Professor of Nutrition Kerri LaCharite acted as Johnson’s sous chef for the event.

“It was very enlightening how things like vegetables can taste great if you know what to do with them—Kale can really taste delicious,” said Minoo Samuel, Nutrition Graduate Certificate student. Johnson showed students how massaging lemon juice into kale changes the texture and makes the cabbage more delicious and versatile.

Johnson shared tips on knife safety and how to incorporate vegetables into other meals, such as cauliflower rice, chickpeas, and kale chips. She recommends that cauliflower is an easy and adaptable vegetable to start with.

Nutrition is a fundamental part of public health and living a well-rounded, long life. The College is dedicated to learning and sharing more about the nutrition of college students through the Mason: Health Starts Here study. Recently, the study found that college students are exceeding U.S. dietary guidelines for added sugar, refined grains, sodium, and saturated fat, which are all nutrients that should be limited.

“These demos not only give me a chance to practice my teaching skills, but also teach people a few basic cooking skills that they will carry with them and use in their lives day-to-day. Food is important to me because of the positive connotations surrounding the word,” said Johnson, who has a degree from the Culinary Institute of New York and now teaches Mason’s Fundamentals of Cooking class. “Teaching people how to cook allows me to encourage more of those home-cooked meals, which is important in reducing resource consumption (i.e. fast food, take-out, etc.) as well as creating more positive experiences around food.”

The Nutrition and Food Studies Department has hosted a variety of events since the Nutrition Kitchen in Peterson Hall opened in the spring of 2018 to help raise awareness of the role healthy eating, nutrition, and food systems can play in the public’s health. In conjunction with Alumni Relations and the Office for Advancement, the Department held monthly online cooking classes, called Patriots in the Kitchen, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, that were open to the Mason community and the public.

The Nutrition and Food Studies Department focuses on teaching and training students to address public health issues involving nutrition and food access. It offers undergraduate and graduate courses in cooking, nutrition, food and culture, food systems, and food studies.

New Study Finds that College Freshmen Exceed Many U.S. Dietary Guidelines, Increasing Risk of Chronic Health Conditions

John Brandon Cantrell — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 15:31:52 +0000

New Study Finds that College Freshmen Exceed Many U.S. Dietary Guidelines, Increasing Risk of Chronic Health Conditions John Brandon C… Wed, 02/09/2022 - 10:31

Mason: Health Starts Here study finds most college freshmen exceed U.S. dietary guidelines for added sugar, refined grains, sodium, and saturated fat.

Photo by Armin Rimoldi from Pexels

The “Freshman 15” is common among college students, when newfound independence and unrestricted access to dining halls make them more susceptible to poor nutritional intake. Poor nutrition in college students is correlated with an increased risk of a variety of chronic health conditions.

Mason: Health Starts Here (HSH), a longitudinal cohort study, finds that most college freshmen exceed U.S. dietary guidelines for added sugar, refined grains, sodium, and saturated fat, which are all nutrients that should be limited. Physical activity, race/ethnicity, and living on campus contributed to the excess intake of these nutrients.

Why don’t college freshmen meet the US dietary guidelines for added sugar, refined grains, sodium, and saturated fat? is published in the Journal of American College Health.

The data analysis in the study was conducted by Ziaul Rana, a former postdoctoral research fellow at Mason and current researcher at the New York Academy of Sciences; Erika Kennedy, Master of Public Health student; Lilian De Jonge, associate professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies; Lawrence Cheskin, chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies; Cara Frankenfeld, associate professor at the Ģ��AV of Puget Sound; and Jaclyn Bertoldo from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“There’s very little published information on young adult college students’ diets,” said Cheskin. “While it is known that college students suffer from poorer nutrition on average, less is known about the food source contributors to nutrients recommended for limited consumption and personal characteristics associated with meeting dietary guidelines.” This study has filled in some of those gaps.

One-third of participants met added sugar guidelines and only 4% met daily refined grains requirements. Fewer than half met saturated fat guidelines, and slightly over half met recommended sodium guidelines. Recommendations for each nutrient came from Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which is released by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services. Most sugar intake was from fruits, soda, and sweetened water. Pizza and rice were the most popular source of refined grains and sodium with pizza hitting the trifecta and also coming in at the top of the saturated fat category.

Funded by Mason’s Institute of BioHealth Innovation, HSH is a first-of-its-kind transdisciplinary student cohort study to understand and improve the health and well-being of university students. It follows a broad sample of young adults, specifically Mason students, over time to capture the diversity of their experiences in college and how it affects their health and well-being. The added sugar, refined grains, sodium, and saturated fat study was done using the 2019-20 HSH cohort using a food frequency questionnaire that reflected the past month’s food with portion size designed to assess food and dietary intakes.

In order to determine whether this study can be used to generalize across other college-aged students, the team compared it with similar age and education data from the 2015-16 and 2017-18 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a representative sample collected by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Most participants in the HSH study resided in urban areas and had mid-level socio-economic status. Thus, the results may not be generalizable to students living in rural areas or those with a lower level of income,” says Cheskin.

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