I came this year to Creighton University from Portugal, and it has been impossible for me to eat as healthy as I used to back home. Where I come from, we have a Mediterranean diet that makes us eat healthy, because we are able to eat every type of food in the right quantities. On Creighton’s Campus, I just find it impossible to do.

The places that are available to grab a meal on campus—Brandeis and Becker (which basically serve the same food), and then Davis Diner, Java Jay and Skutt—are limited, although I am only counting the places where you can eat a full meal and can pay with meal swipes. Unless you eat salads, it is impossible to eat healthy in Davis Diner, Skutt and Java Jay. Therefore, we are left to choose between Becker and Brandeis.

Since these two are very similar, I will describe Brandeis because I believe it has more choices than Becker. Brandeis always has between two and three soups – which are not always as healthy as people would think – and has seven different “stations” that serve different types of food. The regular ones are the pizza station, the grill station, the sandwich station and the salad bar. This leaves us with the dish of the day, the international station – which also differs every day, but is often fried food – and the vegetarian station, which is not that popular because most people do not like vegetarian food.

For desserts we always have cake and ice-cream, but we rarely have a sufficient variety of fruits. We have bananas, which are green, but edible—and apples—which look and taste like plastic, and are not edible at all. Sometimes we have melon, grapes or pineapple, but it is rare to have them for lunch, and you never have them for dinner. On the weekends there is only canned fruit which is not as healthy.

After seeing all the options, many Americans would normally say that we can make healthy choices on campus because we have lots of places that sell salads and sandwiches; (I said Americans because people from the rest of the world do not consider sandwiches that healthy). We can eat healthy one day, maybe two or three days, but we cannot do it for a whole week. We cannot eat sandwiches and salads every day, twice a day, forever. It is not good for us, because we need to vary what we eat in order to complete the food pyramid and thus be healthy. Consequently, most times we are forced to choose between Brandeis and Becker, where at least there is more variety.

And even here, more often than not, we find a problem. After eliminating all the unhealthy choices, we are left with the dish of the day, which is sometimes healthy, but not always, and the international station, which is more times unhealthy than healthy because it is often fried food. Basically, there is only one other healthy choice apart from salads; if we do not like it, we have to turn to unhealthier choices—for which we are always provided with huge variety.

Then there is another problem, the desserts. We either eat a banana or we choose between the large variety of ice cream, cakes and pies. I ask myself why do we have a big variety of ice-cream, cakes and pies and we do not have at least an equivalent variety of fruit?

Finally, why, from the five places we have available in campus, do only two have different healthier options every day? Why are there more unhealthy options than healthy ones? Being healthy is one of the most important things in life. If the Creighton University administration places so much emphasis on the idea that Creighton is not only here to teach us academically, but to prepare us for our adult lives, is not eating well one of the most important things of our lives? If one of the biggest problems in America is obesity, should they not try to teach students how to avoid it?