Today: Mar 28, 2024

‘Let’s Smash (Avocados)’ encourages healthy food choices

Sofia Rositani – Reporter

Students surrounded themselves with homemade guacamole, tortilla chips and vegetables as they learned about nutrition for an event called Let’s Smash (Avocados) to help them start off the new semester by making healthy choices.

The nutritionist, Courtney Huggins from ShopRite comes to Southern twice a year for the Week of Welcome to teach the students how to eat healthy and not fill up on junk food.

“It’s really about balance and moderations,” said Huggins. “Balancing out your plate making a quarter of your plate starches, a quarter protein, and then filling in the other half with vegetables. So that’s like the key to being healthy.”

Students were also able to ask Huggins questions about how to eat healthy and how they could substitute healthy food into their diet.

“Guacamole is just a healthy snack, an alternative, to just having chips and cookies. The guacamole has some nice nutrients in it we have some tomatoes, onions, and we have veggies so a different snack that’s better for you.”

She showed how she made the guacamole during the process. Health services along with the wellness and fitness center put on this event and Jakell Burgess, a nurse practitioner at health services, helped with the event.

“Our Week of Welcome motto in collaboration with wellness and fitness was ‘new year healthy you,’ so we just wanted to promote healthy snacks.”

Assistant Director of the Fitness Center, Jessica Scibek, was another specialist who came to help educate students on the importance of eating healthy, having a proper diet, and how to prep foods.

“We just really wanted people to meet the dietitian who provides nutrition counseling with us on campus and get students off to a healthy start with some veggies and dip and kind of interest in making their own food or being a part of the process and thinking about what’s going into your body,” said Scibek.

Some students lined up to get a taste of the homemade guacamole and chips to learn about eating healthier. Nursing major Kyley Fiondella, a senior said she enjoys eating healthy because “healthy food is yummy and good for you at the same time.”

Other students said they were there because they just needed something to eat. Week of Welcome always provides food and they enjoy guacamole and avocados.

However, the event mostly consisted of Huggins making the guacamole while the students sampled it. There were pamphlets that offered new and healthy foods that the students can incorporate to make homemade guacamole in the future.

“We have done some make your own guacamole in residence halls with the dietician before and it was really fun. The students really liked it,” Scibek said. “We thought we would do one for the week of welcome and see if we can reach more students than just the couple that come in the halls.”

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