What do you guys Eat in Pharmacy School?

Started by dumbguy
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dumbguy

dumbguy

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I'm about to start pharmacy school and I'm kinda worried because I'm spoiled and used to eating what my mom cooks. The pharmacy school I got accepted to is out of state and the only thing I can cook is instant noodles(pour hot water into a cup). I was just wondering for all you current pharmacy students, what do you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Do you pig out on junk food? What is a good brain food to eat? Since I can't cook, I was thinking of having cereal for breakfast, eat out at fast food restaurant for lunch, and cereal for dinner. An occasional instant noodles when it is cold. Any suggestions?
 
dumbguy said:
I'm about to start pharmacy school and I'm kinda worried because I'm spoiled and used to eating what my mom cooks. The pharmacy school I got accepted to is out of state and the only thing I can cook is instant noodles(pour hot water into a cup). I was just wondering for all you current pharmacy students, what do you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Do you pig out on junk food? What is a good brain food to eat? Since I can't cook, I was thinking of having cereal for breakfast, eat out at fast food restaurant for lunch, and cereal for dinner. An occasional instant noodles when it is cold. Any suggestions?
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For breakfast, cereal is always cheap, quick, and fast. However its nothing but sugar on top of more sugar. Oatmeal isnt that much better either. I usually go with two eggs and 2 slices of bacon. It may have more saturated fat but it is still within my normal daily limit and it is full of proteins so it gets broken down over the next few hours making me more full. I rather have that than a sugar spike.

For lunch, I always go with sandwiches or left overs from last night. Campbell/progressive can soups are also pretty cheap and good when they are on sale and good for a quick lunch.

Snacks usually consists of fruits.

For dinner, I always turn on the oven and just throw some chicken in it at 350 degree and cook for an hour. I marinate it with different stuff such as dressings, dry rubs, etc. For starch, I heat up can corn or buy veggies at the supermarket. Sweet potatos offer a lot of flavors and can cook in the oven with the chicken. If you dont have an oven, the same can be applied to slow cookers. Stir fry is easy too. Google is your friends for creative recipes.
 
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Aznfarmerboi said:
For breakfast, cereal is always cheap, quick, and fast. However its nothing but sugar on more sugar. Oatmeal isnt that much better either. I go with two eggs and 2 slices of bacon. It may have more saturated fat but its still within normal daily value and its proteins so it gets broken down over the next few hours making you more full. I rather have that than a sugar spike.

For lunch, I always go with sandwiches or left overs from last night. Campbell/progressive can soups are also pretty cheap when they are on sale and good for a quick lunch.

Snacks usually consists of fruits.

For dinner, I always turn on the oven and just throw some chicken in it at 350 degree and cook for an hour. I marinate it with different stuff such as dressings, dry rubs, etc. For starch, I heat up can corn or buy veggies at the supermarket. Sweet potatos offer a lot of flavors and can cook in the oven with the chicken. If you dont have an oven, the same can be applied to slow cookers. Stir fry is easy too. Google is your friends for creative recipes.
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There are some low sugar healthy cereals with high fiber like Cheerios and Special K. I like to mix the 2 together with soy milk. I'm lactose-intolerant.
Any suggestions for brain food to deal with all that stress and weekly quizzes? I don't want to eat any junk food or processed food. I'm going to pharmacy school to be a drug dealer, not a drug user. I don't want to be on high blood pressure pills or cholesterol pills for the rest of my life.
 
dumbguy said:
There are some low sugar healthy cereals with high fiber like Cheerios and Special K. I like to mix the 2 together with soy milk. I'm lactose-intolerant.
Any suggestions for brain food to deal with all that stress and weekly quizzes? I don't want to eat any junk food or processed food. I'm going to pharmacy school to be a drug dealer, not a drug user. I don't want to be on high blood pressure pills or cholesterol pills for the rest of my life.
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try nibbling on some slices of wheat bread or popping yourself a cherry tomato between classes.
 
I am in the same boat also since I currently live at home and thrive on home cooking!

I suggest knowing how to make spaghetti. Baking chicken is easy. Mix tuna from the can with salad. Buy one of those cooking books for simple and fast meals.
 
inquirer89 said:
I am in the same boat also since I currently live at home and thrive on home cooking!

I suggest knowing how to make spaghetti. Baking chicken is easy. Mix tuna from the can with salad. Buy one of those cooking books for simple and fast meals.
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When cooking spaghetti or any other pasta, I always buy Barilla because it tastes better. It doesnt stick together like a lot of the generic pasta that I tried. Also try cooking different types of pasta. When cooking it, follow directions. Try the pasta when its near the end of cooking time for your preference of al dente- firmness or whatever.

Salads are another of my favorite. I throw left over zitis in it, tomatos, blueberries, anything I can find in my fridge. Yummy.
 
I am in the opposite situation, I am going back to my mom's cooking next year.😀

I try to eat cheap and healthy most of the time but does not always happen.

Breakfast:

1. Slow cook oatmeal with chopped up fruit cooked in with it. I try to get some variety by switching the fruit I add to the oatmeal: bananas, apples, pears and peaches. Sometimes throwing in some raisins is tasty also. You can buy oatmeal and some fruit for cheap.

2. Eggs, toast and fruit.

Lunch:

1. Leftovers

2. Home made sandwiches.

Dinner:

Buy a cookbook or look up some recipe ideas online. It is always good to know how to cook a few things if you have a date over for dinner or need to BBQ for some friends. Cooking yourself dinner will take your mind off school and help you relax. Make time to cook.
 
Breakfast: Trader Joe's blueberries, raisin bran, walnuts, and whole milk (fill you up for a long time)

Lunch: Peanut butter granola bar, peanut butter sandwich, egg sandwich, or some sandwich

Dinner: Pasta with too many ingredients. I add a lot of vegetables and change it up every day.
 
Get a George Foreman grill and a blender. You can cook anything from grilled veggies to quesadillas on a GF grill. Blenders are good if you like smoothies, which can be really healthy if you pass on the ice cream and added sugar. A cup of ice and 1/8 cup of milk powder are essential to a tasty smoothie, not yogurt or fresh milk, because it makes the smoothie thicker and not runny. I used to work for one of those well-known smoothie places, you know. 😉

I like Lean or Hot Pockets and Bagel Bites. Yogurt in a cup is good, too. I've got some V8 Fusion and V8 low sodium in my fridge right now. Meal bars are good, but you have to try a few varieties to see what flavors/brands you like. I would recommend Cliff Bars.

Good luck with everything! :luck:


Oh, I can't believe I forgot about frozen pizza! Frozen pizza can be healthy if you stick to cheese or veggie varieties. Watch out for any trans fat, though. Some flavors of some brands will contain trans fat, and that's not healthy.

PS- In general, you should stay away from fast food, unless it's a lean Subway sandwich or a salad.
 
Mornings - I usually grab a bagel w/ cream cheese, a coffee, and an orange juice from Dunkin Donuts on my drive to school. Sometimes I'll substitute the cream cheese for egg and cheese, which surprisingly has less calories.

Lunch - It varies, sometimes I get chinese food, sometimes a hot dog from the vendor down the street, maybe a tuna wrap, I try to avoid McDonalds like the plague. Or I won't eat at school and just go to my study place (Persian food/hookah bar), some pita bread and hummus is a great option.

Dinner - Sometimes I go without dinner, but usually some grilled chicken.
 
Another tip is to stay away from big packages. If you are living by yourself, food can go bad really quick. If I buy beef, I usually cook them the same night. My diet mostly consists of chicken thighs because its cheap, flavorable, and no noticable change in taste if I freeze it. Italian sausages in supermarkets are also awesome.
 
Pasta is the non-cookers best friend. Boil some water, toss in the noodles til their soft and heat up some bottled spaghetti sauce. Onec you get comfortable around the stove, you'll learn to make other simple things like thin steaks for dinner, scrambled eggs and sausage for breakfast, etc. Once you get comfortable around the stove/oven, it gets pretty easy to learn. You don't even need a cookbook anymore as long as you've got the internet!

Edit: someone above mentioned a foreman grill... ABSOLUTELY! It doesn't get easier (or healthier if you care about that kind of stuff) than that.
 
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No matter how poor or desparate, a steak is not meant to be fried. Steaks are meant to be on the grill. I dont care who you talk to, if it isnt on the grill it isnt a steak.

Anyhow, I cook quite a bit, for the lady and myself. She is a chef and once she has been around it all day she doesnt want to have to come home and do it too, so I get stuck with it. Which actually is ok by me, I never really knew how to until I met her, so it is something fun to learn.

In addition to all the other great tips, I have to throw out my love for grilled cheese and steamed vegetables (separate of course). Both are so easy to cook. The grilled cheese, well . . . butter, bread, cheese and a hot pan, you will figure it out. The vegetables on the other hand you can find in the frozen food section of the grocery store. Pop them in the microwave for 4 - 5 min and delicious steamed vegetables. They have all kinds of varieties and I think even new items like rice with peppers and some different takes on potatoes. They are usually pretty cheap too, like $1 - $1.50 per bag.
 
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How about before you leave home, have your parents help teach you to cook? It's really not that difficult. If you have the skills to get through chem lab, then you have the skills to cook. And it usually smells and tastes better!

I suggest getting a student cookbook as well. I have a vegetarian one that is really easy. My favorite is Student's Vegetarian Cookbook by Carole Raymond. Everything's really easy, the serving sizes are small, and there's only one or two recipes I don't like. Even the baking things are easy. I have an older edition; I'm not sure how the newer editions are. I prefer vegetarian cooking, and it's easier at first because you don't have to worry about giving yourself salmonella poisoning because you didn't clean up enough or cook something enough.

Another good cookbook, which has lots of tips if you're new to cooking: Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen by Kevin Mills and Nancy Mills. Again, I have the older edition, but it's really good with explaining every single step.

There seriously are a ton of cookbooks for beginning cooks. Recipes are really just protocols (in fact, after all my time in the lab, I sometimes slip and call the recipe a protocol). Some are better than others. Just be prepared that after you go from the beginning cookbook to more advanced, they don't spell everything out anymore!

Oh, one more thing: these beginning cookbooks have a suggested list of what cooking tools you need and what food to keep in stock in your kitchen. They are good for ideas, but they are usually more extensive than any person I know actually has. Check with friends or your parents for suggestions on what you need.
 
He can also try protein shakes (with milk or fruit drink). I sometimes use them for on-the-go snacks or a quick breakfast. Of course, they work best with an exercise regiment too.
 
There are also occasionally cooking classes at a local community college. I wouldn't suggest something complicated, though, if you're just starting out.

If you're anywhere near a Trader Joe's, they have lots of good food in the freezer section that is easy. You either toss it in the oven or a pan, usually.

The hardest part sometimes about leaving home is it's so easy to eat unhealthy foods, both by overly processed foods and also by eating out, especially at the fast food places. Make sure to watch what you eat (brush up on caloric needs and what not if you need to) or you might need to buy a whole new wardrobe!
 
I'm trying to find some simple recipes for cooking fish, mostly salmon... need to up my fish intake to more than once every month.
 
fhx06 said:
I'm trying to find some simple recipes for cooking fish, mostly salmon... need to up my fish intake to more than once every month.
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completely cover the filet with brown sugar then bake it. The sugar will completely caramelize... it will taste better if you cook it on a cedar board.

Or you can simply cook the filet with some lemon juice, salt and pepper.
 
I used to stink up the entire dorm (we had a public kitchen in the middle of the hallway) making Red Beans and Rice. Of course I used to let the Red Bean sauce simmer for hours and hours.. with a little cajun spice, bay leaves, garlic, onion, and lots of jalepeno sausage. Bam!
 
ItsOverZyvox said:
Then came the PJ sammich.
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Hmm... good point! But you still don't have to worry about undercooking the PB sandwich... ;-)

For those of you who actually cook, I highly recommend the Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Country recipes. They are magazines and also shows on PBS. It's like the scientist way of cooking. They decide they want to make the best something (whether it's chicken picatta or a grilled cheese sandwich). They try a whole bunch of recipes and then come up with the best one. It's not always the most healthy (although they do have some low-fat recipes), but it's very good.
 
thanks for all the suggestions

how about some food where i can just pop into the microwave or pour hot water in or milk on and eat it right away?
 
dumbguy said:
thanks for all the suggestions

how about some food where i can just pop into the microwave or pour hot water in or milk on and eat it right away?
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Oat Meal. It'll lower your cholesterol.

I actually sprinkle tobasco on my plain oat meal. Breakfast of champions.
 
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dumbguy said:
thanks for all the suggestions

how about some food where i can just pop into the microwave or pour hot water in or milk on and eat it right away?
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trader joe's has tons of awesome frozen foods. or you can do lean cuisines.
 
Oatmeal, ramen noodles, brown rice, cereal, canned tuna, canned salmon, canned soups, carrots, broccoli, and wheat bread sums up the last 7 months of my diet. To be more specific, it's about 40% oatmeal, 30% brown rice, and 15% ramen noodles with an assortment of everything else thrown in.

I'm going to second the suggestion about the George Foreman Grill. I'd also highly recommend a slow cooker (Crockpot). As a person who truly cannot cook, using a slow cooker requires very little skill. You just throw some sort of meat in there, any number of vegetables, a variable quantity of rice, 2-4 cups of water, and then you turn it on and leave it alone for 6-12 hours. On a few occasions, I've just prepared stuff before I go to bed at night, and the stuff is more than ready for lunch at noon the next day.

--Garfield3d
 
dumbguy said:
thanks for all the suggestions

how about some food where i can just pop into the microwave or pour hot water in or milk on and eat it right away?
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That's not ignorance... it's called being LAZY!!!

Prepared foods are some of the worst foods (health wise) available. Stay away from that crap unless you to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes from all of the added fat, sugar, and salt.

It's time to man up and learn how to cook for yourself! 😛
 
I recently had to revamp my diet as I was consuming way too much sodium from frozen, canned, and in general easy to prepare foods. Ugh I freak myself out when I realize how much msg and sodium I was consuming a day. Sometimes as often as 5 times a week I would make 2 packets of ramen noodles for a meal. That's supposedly 4 servings and like 130ish% of the RDA for sodium.
 
Get a box of oatmeal and a tub of chocolate whey protein. Grind up the oatmeal using a coffee grinder and mix it into the whey, maybe about a 3 to 1 ratio. Use the resulting powder to mix into milk. This is my favorite breakfast meal - it's not too overburdened with protein and it has enough fiber to keep me full for a while. Plus it practically has zero grams of sugar (except for the lactose) and zero grams of fat. It's awesome stuff
 
mcnulty said:
Get a box of oatmeal and a tub of chocolate whey protein. Grind up the oatmeal using a coffee grinder and mix it into the whey, maybe about a 3 to 1 ratio. Use the resulting powder to mix into milk. This is my favorite breakfast meal - it's not too overburdened with protein and it has enough fiber to keep me full for a while. Plus it practically has zero grams of sugar (except for the lactose) and zero grams of fat. It's awesome stuff
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I had been using whey protein for my lifting regimen, but im somewhat put off by the fact that it has creatine in it. Does anyone have any opinions negative against creatine?
 
PharmDstudent said:
That's not ignorance... it's called being LAZY!!!

Prepared foods are some of the worst foods (health wise) available. Stay away from that crap unless you to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes from all of the added fat, sugar, and salt.

It's time to man up and learn how to cook for yourself! 😛
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you mean it's time to woman up...right? Men can't cook. :laugh:

anyways, you're right. All these processed food is really bad. Lately, I've been eating alot of instant noodles. I work in a mail order pharmacy and all this sitting down has my hemmorhoids starting to act up. I was checking the ingredients on those instant noodles....and it kind of shocked me. It had 1300mg of sodium and lots of fat.. No wonder my hemmorhoids was getting bad....anyways enough of my hemmorhoids....I started in the past 2 weeks eating lots of whole grain high fiber cereal with soy milk and I'm starting to notice my hemmorhoids are shrinking and I feel better overall. My skin is looking better. There is a saying that you are what you eat. This is definitely true.
 
aboveliquidice said:
Very modern... unfortunately this trend does not apply to me 🙁
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Lol.. Well I hope your fiance can cook for the both of you then.

Hmm.. I feel kind of stalker-ish mentioning your fiance but I saw you mentioning her in the kids thread in pre-pharm. 😛
 
dumbguy said:
you mean it's time to woman up...right? Men can't cook. :laugh:

anyways, you're right. All these processed food is really bad. Lately, I've been eating alot of instant noodles. I work in a mail order pharmacy and all this sitting down has my hemmorhoids starting to act up. I was checking the ingredients on those instant noodles....and it kind of shocked me. It had 1300mg of sodium and lots of fat.. No wonder my hemmorhoids was getting bad....anyways enough of my hemmorhoids....I started in the past 2 weeks eating lots of whole grain high fiber cereal with soy milk and I'm starting to notice my hemmorhoids are shrinking and I feel better overall. My skin is looking better. There is a saying that you are what you eat. This is definitely true.
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I take offense to that, Men are much better cooks than Women. Have you ever seen who the best chefs are?

Gordon Ramsey, Emeril Lagassi, all of them are carrying the XY gene. Hell, I think I'm the best cook in my house but my mom hates when I use the kitchen because after I cook something, the kitchen looks like a hurricane hit it.
 
Neither of my parents cook very well so I can't really ask them for advice; all they do nowadays seems to be to go out and eat. I guess they really like going to Sweet Tomatoes.
 
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i just make an enormous batch of chili every week and eat it every dinner. breakfast = cereal. lunch = pb&j . simple is good
 
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