If college students were being graded on their eating habits, most would fail. The majority don’t even come close to the recommended minimum five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. The unlimited, around-the-clock, unhealthy food choices; inconsistent meal schedules; and emotional eating can cause quite a decline in diet quality. Add excessive alcohol use to the mix and any chances at healthy nutrition go down the toilet!
While college can be a place to form unhealthy habits, it is also a place to eliminate them—and practice healthier ones. College students seem starved for nutrition education and for feedback that can guide them towards a balanced diet. Providing the caloric value of foods and typical alcoholic drinks is a good place to start. But going a step deeper and discussing the impact of alcohol on the nutritional process may prove quite illuminating.
Alcohol and Nutrition: A Close Link
The process of nutrition has two essential purposes: to provide energy and to maintain body structure and function. Nutrition fuels the body with energy from healthy foods which provide the basic elements needed to replace worn or damaged cells. Food also provides the nutritional components a body needs to function. In a study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, researchers found that people who drink the largest quantities of alcohol, even infrequently, often eat poorly, limiting their supply of essential nutrients and affecting both energy supply and structural maintenance. Furthermore, alcohol interrupts the nutritional process by affecting the ease with which a body digests, stores, utilizes, and excretes nutrients.
The three basic nutritional components found in food—carbohydrates, proteins, and fats—are used as energy after being converted to simpler products. The vitamin, mineral, and water content add to the nutritional value of each of these nutrients but do not provide any calories. The key to a healthy diet is to eat foods that provide a variety of vitamins and minerals without a lot of calories. Alcohol can do the exact opposite of this, adding empty (and wasted) calories with no nutritional value. Even if healthy foods are ingested, alcohol interferes with how the body processes and stores nutrients so that these healthy foods don’t get to do their job. This happens because alcohol:
- Decreases secretion of digestive enzymes from the pancreas.
- Damages the cells lining the stomach and intestines, thus disabling transport of some nutrients into the blood.
Specific Nutritional Deficiencies
The deficiencies closely associated with regular alcohol consumption include folate, vitamin B-12, vitamin A, and calcium.
Folate: Folate helps produce and maintain new cells. Alcohol interferes with folate intake, absorption, transport to tissues, and the storage of folate in the liver.
Vitamin B-12: Vitamin B-12 is necessary to maintain healthy nerve cells and red blood cells. One study showed a five percent decrease in mean serum vitamin B-12 concentrations when alcohol consumption increased from zero to 30 grams per day.
Vitamin A: Vitamin A is needed for vision, to regulate the immune system, for bone growth, for reproduction, cell division, and differentiation. Alcohol promotes a deficiency of vitamin A.
Calcium: Calcium is needed for blood vessel and muscle concentration, and for transmission of messages through the nervous system. Alcohol causes a loss of calcium by increasing urinary calcium excretion.
The bottom line is that alcohol is considered a poison by the body and all efforts are made to excrete it. It can wreak havoc on a system that is in place for overall health and well-being. The damage is not limited to alcoholics. Advising students on the link between nutrition and alcohol can be two-fold: exploring the nutritional impact, and making recommendations for replacing the missing nutrients with food and supplements.
For more information on essential vitamins visit: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002399.htm