We can offer suggestions about eating healthy and fresh while you're away at college all we want, but the truth of the matter is, most of us are broke as a joke during our time spent on campus. Eating with the college cafeteria meal plan is an inexpensive alternative, but not always the healthiest or the tastiest. Here are five tips for getting more nutrition (and taste) by bringing a little of the home kitchen to the dorm cafeteria.
The most expensive thing to purchase out of your own pocket while away on your own will be your proteins and fresh fruits and vegetables. Starches are always cheap and usually friendly to dorm room appliances (microwaves, hot plates, etc.), but the rest can feel extravagant or out of reach when push comes to shove with your monthly budget.
Here are a few tips to help put a twist on your basic school cafeteria food and hopefully keep the Freshman 15 at bay too.
1. Bring A Doggy Bag: It sounds cheap, but if food is kept sectioned off, there's no reason why three extra chicken strips on your plate can't be taken back to your room and chilled for later use. Cut them up and toss them on a salad or make them into a wrap; heck, just eat them as they are! If you bring a plastic snap top container or a bento box, you can even return home with fresh fruits and vegetables with little struggle or explosive messes in your backpacks. Even if your friends think you're weird, they'll soon come around to your thrifty ways.
2. Pack Spice Packs: The food served up in your local school cafeteria isn't usually all that horribly prepared, but it can be a little on the flavorless side of things. Great spices to bring along to stir into your dishes are: sea salt, garlic powder, black pepper, paprika, hot sauce or lime and lemon powders. You can either package them like you would for camping, or make blends ahead and carry a standard bag or shaker of your favorite seasoning mixes.
3. Pick And Choose: Just because certain things are served together, doesn't mean you have to eat them together. Mix things up to create your own, healthier versions of their menu. Don't forget to season!
4. Bring One Thing From Home: It could be oven roasted tofu chunks to top off a great salad or real cheese for your hamburger; small personal touches are a great way to liven things up without shilling out all of your cash for the week.
5. Eat Out Of Order: Just because the dinner served is meatloaf and potatoes, doesn't mean the breakfast bar is out of the question. Don't be afraid to eat cereal and milk for dinner if it's going to taste better and not weigh you down later on. Cereal, toast, apples and oranges are usually available any time of the day!
Do you have any dorm or college-related eating tips?
Related: Could You Live Without an Oven?
(Image: Flickr Member VirtualErn licensed for use under Creative Commons)
10 Picnic-Ready Salads to Eat Outside
Recipe: Thai Ginger Chicken Stir-Fry
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Red-and-Pink-Stripe...
Ellen's Thirties Style Small Space
Juan's Garage Turned Modern Guest House
This is a great list, but you can't take food from most college dining halls. At my university, you could take one beverage or one fruit or one ice cream cone. Any more than that (two apples, say) and you were liable to be chased down by the card swiper.
Emily, I think that most dining halls--given that they are AYCE--would be accepting of people putting food on their plate and then into a tupperware container. Further, if you pack a tupperware in a small purse, you're less liable to be caught.
things may have changed since i was in college (not *that* long ago, i swear), but you could definitely get "to go" containers from our dining halls. i never thought about taking anything to make into another meal later, but i sometimes would get a to go box if i wanted to pick up lunch on the go.
i'll echo tip #5, though. i ate a *lot* of cereal in college. for all meals. and the salad bar. frankly, this is b/c i am a vegetarian and the veggie options in the dining halls were not always the greatest. wheat chex can be pretty filling!
Yikes, we got into serious trouble at my university if we tried to take food out of the hall! Fruit was about the only thing that was allowed, along with the aforementioned ice cream cones. It's all about being very, VERY discreet...
Whats all this from home stuff, when I ate at the cafeteria it was because I lived in the dorm with no ability to cook, moving into an apartment freed me from the cafeteria forever. Are there people who actually choose to eat cafeteria food over take-out or home cooked?
I'm with the two previous commenters who said taking stuff with you was a no-go. You could get a "to go" lunch, but that was in lieu of going into the dining commons.
Keep in mind that not all of the DCs on campus will serve all the same things. We had one that had a noodle bar and another with a taco bar, that sort of thing. If there's a farmer's market in town, try to make the trip. You'll still be able to make a salad or something in your dorm room (hide your knives from roomies! Roomies are destruction incarnate a lot of the time, unfortunately). Crackers and cereal also keep well and can serve as dinner when you miss the DC closing and none of the restaurants you can get to are open.
Do yourself a favor and STAY AWAY from the "late night" offerings. They're ususally things like pizza, grilled cheese and fresh cookies, which are delicious but are probably also the reason I gained 10 pounds freshman year despite biking everywhere.
My roommates and I kept little jars of seasonings at home - asian pickled cabbage, spice packets, my mom's salad dressing - and took them with us to the cafeteria. Even if you are eating at the cafeteria - like we were - because you can't afford to eat out, if you have any pocket money (I spent a bit of my wages), it's worth splurging occasionally on a nice dressing or something you really like to keep the meals edible!
I wasn't in college so long ago and you could definitely take food out of all the dining halls in their to-go counters (but you paid by weight/entree for most of these options and there was no all you can eat/buffet option, which is what I guess a lot of colleges do now). Also sally599, FYI, many colleges (even if you live off-campus) require you to purchase some kind of eating plan.
Anyhow, we had pretty good food, but here are my tips:
1) if you have a halal or kosher dining hall, the quality of food is often better there
2) the salad bar is your friend--bring your own dressing with you if they don't have balsamic and olive oil there to avoid the nasty bottled salad dressing chemical flavor. Remember that if there's Dijon available, it's nice to combine that with balsamic or some lemon juice from the lemon slices that are available in most any condiment area and oil to make a nice vinaigrette.
3) Amp up soups or stews from the cafeteria with nice veggies. We always had nice homemade soup options that were meat-free (curried lentil; African peanut stew), but I still found that amping them up with some extra fresh carrot, peas, broccoli, or chickpeas from the salad bar often helped on the veggie loading (you can always pay for weight by salad, pay for soup separately and mix the two at the table).
4) if you have a small kitchen in the dorm to be able to cook, but like most dorms not much of an area to store say the 4-8 types of veggies you'd like in a homemade stirfry or pasta (or store them without them getting stolen) , get your raw ingredients from the cafeteria. Store nice jarred tomato sauce and pasta and stir-fry sauces in the dorm; do the pay for weight salad bar and pick up a nice variety of veggies and put the meal together in the dorm kitchen.
5) most things taste better with fresh lemon juice stirred in (usually lemon segments are available in condiment section). Also, pack your own shaker of fav seasoning or mini bottle of hot sauce in your backpack to amp up the flavor in cafeteria options without adding too much salt/fat/gross stuff.
I used to bring a hunk of good-quality Parmesan into the dining hall with me. I got a lot of weird looks, but when I melted it on top of slightly limp pasta and once-frozen broccoli, things did taste much better!
My school was all-you-can-eat OR to-go. You had to be sneaky to do both... And I guess I was lucky, because our food was not that bad!
Besides hot sauce, lemon juice, and pepper, if something was a little "blah" I would pour a little herby salad dressing on it.
The food at my college wasn't that bad, either. It just got old after a while and wasn't that good, especially compared to Mom's home cooking.
Every college caf I've ever been in has been pretty ick, but these are some good suggestions. Cereal for dinner is definitely a good option. Also, check out all your options; just because there is one caf/food hall in your dorm doesn't mean that it is the only one available to you.
I'd like to add this to the discussion: If your campus has a store that sells basics like bread, peanut butter, cereal, etc. Don't buy there! It will almost always be outrageously expensive. Go find a nearby grocery or convenience store instead.
yuck, hated college caf food! Rarely ate there.
The trick is to avoid the hot entrees, which are usually not very good, and construct your own meal using side dishes (baked potatoes, for instance) and items from the salad and pasta bars and various condiments. Most dining halls have microwaves, toaster ovens, etc...use them. I would often bypass the mystery meatloaf and fix myself a tasty and filling veggie pasta dish for dinner.
At my college, freshmen were required to purchase a really hefty meal plan; I was left with a couple hundred dollars on my account, which did not roll over to the next fall semester. I figured I had to find a way to spend the money somehow, so I bought cases of Snapple and water from the extremely expensive on-campus store, and paid for friends' meals the last couple week of classes.
two words: hot sauce