Features Editor Marta Iwanek and photo editors Lindsay Boeckl, Mohamed Omar and Chelsea Pottage take a look inside four Ryerson students’ fridges and ask them to pick their most healthy and least healthy food item. A look at what your fridge has to say about you
Emily Goode and Andrew Galloway
Emily Goode and Andrew Galloway sing their fridge’s praises. “It’s a very good fridge, but I wish it was bigger to fit more condiments,” jokes Galloway, a second-year continuing education film student at the Chang School. Their fridge is sparsely populated with juices, jars and an Arm and Hammer baking soda box. Goode, a fourth-year film studies student, picks an apple as the healthiest item in her fridge. It’s a stark comparison to ketchup and cheese, she says, and its organic.
She has a shopping list set up to fill her fridge, but hasn’t had the time yet. Between school and work, both their schedules are very busy.
She tries to be healthy, but “I fake it,” she says. “To me healthy is a Subway sandwich on nine grain bread.”
Nicole Trpcic and Kelsey Kaupp
Nicole Trpcic and Kelsey Kaupp’s fridge is packed to full capacity. There are tupperware containers with cooked food, bread, jars, yogurt, condiments and juices as well as frozen finger foods and meats in the freezer. The second-year occupational health and safety student and second-year social work student share their fridge with two other roommates. It’s their first year after residence and they feel their diet is on the healthy side. “We know how it was last year, being on the meal plan it was garbage and now we have the option to eat what we want,” Kaupp says. They share cooking duties between the four, making everything from stew to enchiladas. They come from European parents, so they have to know how to cook, says Kaupp. They share essentials between the four of them as well – mayo, ketchup, tomatoes, freezies and Mr. Noodles.
Trpcic picks the homegrown tomatoes she brought from her house in Hamilton as the healthiest thing in her fridge. They’re organic and cancer fighters and they use them in everything – sandwiches, salads or just as is. She’s also growing cherry tomatoes and a banana tree in her room. They have high ceilings, she jokes. Their diet isn’t good or bad, but when they’re on the go, it gets worse. They resort to eating the ramen. The pantry wasn’t enough storage so there’s overflow under their oven.
Kaupp picks the Betty Croker icing as the least healthy. It’s all processed and there’s nothing natural or good about it. “We eat it straight up and its probably one of the worst things you can do,” she says laughing.
Her least healthy choice is the Betty Crocker icing because its processed and has a lot of sugar. They recently baked a cake. “I don’t really cook,” she says. “I burn most things.”
She’s good at baking though and points out the plate of chocolate chip cookies on her marble counter.
Their trick to trying to eat healthy is having a lot of stuff in the freezer. “We never get around to eating half the stuff we have,” says Galloway, so having this storage helps.
Goode takes out a green box of chicken patties for dinner, setting them on the counter to defrost. “Dinner,” she says.
Kaitlyn Arcuri
Kaitlyn Arcuri can count the number of things in her fridge on two hands. The third-year child and youth care worker’s fridge shines bright and white, with leftover sushi, a cheese and broccoli quiche, lettuce, grapes, two fruit smoothies, water, milk, yogurt, a few condiments and bread in the freezer. Yesterday she threw out cheese slices that expired in 2010.
The healthiest thing in her fridge is lettuce she says as she picks up the plastic case from the top shelf of her fridge. It’s a vegetable and she doesn’t have to spend the effort cooking, so it’s easy.
Her least healthiest choice is a cheese and broccoli quiche — because of the unhealthy pastry crust she reasons. As she looks through her fridge, her dog Harley stands on his hind legs and also peruses the shelves.
She knows how to cook, spending a year as a nanny in England cooking meals for the kids. “I didn’t make them eat salad, I swear,” she says, but often neglects cooking meals for herself. “Cooking for one, I don’t know, it’s just depressing.”
She’ll eat healthier when friends or family come over or when she goes out. “I cook too much, too little, I don’t know, I’m lazy.”
Daryl Tan
Daryl Tan has two fridges in the house he shares with roommates — one good and one bad. The fridge upstairs would make any parent with a kid living on their own proud. It’s populated with milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables, yogurt, bread, bagels and meat in the freezer as well. Tan’s black, plastic tupperware containers are filled with chicken adobo he brought from his trip home to Hamilton this weekend.
He goes home once or twice a month and likes doing grocery shopping while there. He drove back with five grocery bags from this trip. “I don’t pay for it when I go home,” he says.
He eats a lot of food, healthy and unhealthy, but his healthy pick is the green grapes. They’re refreshing and a good snack when studying.
His least healthy choice is the chicken fingers in his fridge downstairs. The extra fridge is storage for booze and his two boxes of McCain pizza.
He also has a secret stash of food in a cupboard in his room. He opens it to reveal cases of Vitamin Water, Chef Boyardee and Hereford corned beef in a can. It’s in cans and must have preservatives in it, he says, as he looks at the red, blue and yellow labeled beef, but “when I’m hungry it’s easier to eat.”
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