UPI: “As healthy, home-cooked meals give way to a campus diet of beer and pizza, student waistlines tend to expand. But new research shows it is the waistlines of boys that expand the most. Poll results revealed that girls gained an average of about 4 pounds during their first year at university … But among the male first-year students, weight gains roughly doubled that, hitting an average of about 8 pounds … The investigators found that total caloric intake did not change much over the course of the students’ first year at school. However, food quality did decline, while alcohol consumption increased, particularly among boys.”
“For example, freshman girls saw their body mass index (BMI) — a standard measurement of body fat — rise on average from 22.6 to 23.3. That still kept most girls ‘within the normal weight category’ … In contrast, freshman males saw their BMI rise from 23.9 to 25.1. That change ended up ‘putting them into the overweight category,’ particularly given that the students did not experience height changes over the course of the year.”
“The findings were published online July 3 in the journal PLOS ONE.”
