Jeremy Tan Yang Jing (FASS), Lim Jiahui (FoE), Ow Kai Rong, Wesley (FoE), Tang Yong Jen (FoS), Xu Jing Yin (FASS)
Academic Advisor: Dr. Chua Siew Chin
Industry Advisor: Mr Tay Kang Rui (OCA, NUS)
During a school year, NUS students eat a majority of their meals in NUS canteens. Currently, NUS promotes healthier eating by requiring canteen stalls to provide calorie information for each of their dishes. However, calories are just one part of health equation; a diet needs an array of nutrients in order to be considered healthy. While the Singapore Health Promotion Board has healthier choice labels and healthy plate options to help people make better diet choices, it remains difficult for people to make healthy decisions when eating out. Our group hopes to bridge the gap between the available information and the food decisions NUS students make, by narrowing down the options to a suggested weekly menu of healthy dishes. This project will provide a healthy meal plan based on the food dishes at the YIH canteen. We intend to use the Health Promotion Board nutritional guidelines as a baseline definition for a healthy diet. Following which, we will survey a sample of NUS students to assess their eating habits in terms of how often they eat out, and their main considerations for food choices in order to improve our meal plan. Then we will use consolidate the nutritional information from the Health Promotion Board and other sources, to construct meal choices that people could use for a week. After which, we will do a pilot study on how NUS students might respond to such a meal plan, and the extent that such a meal plan promote healthier meal choices among students. At the end of our study, we would conclude our findings and come up with possible extensions of this project.
Keywords: Healthy food, Culture and Lifestyle Trends, Responsible Consumption, Singapore Health Promotion Board, canteen