a ARTO Students aud money 7— Starving student myth debunked By Grace B. Neptuno ou made it through the first week y of college, bought your books, paid your bills and now you’re starving. Nearly every student goes through an instant noodles phase during college. You don’t have to be another malnutritioned statistic. Take note of some of the tips below to help you stretch your food dollars and keep you from those notoriously B-I-G hips that students tend to develop during their first year. Yes, guys, that goes for your poochy bellies too. 1. Make a list for the grocery store and stick to it. Do not deviate from your list. If you write seven items on your list, make sure you come out with seven items. 2. Compare prices. Check the grocery store’s online flyers to comparison shop before heading out. A few detours could save you precious dollars. 3. Bring cash. Leave your debit card and that naughty credit card at home. Stick to the grocery list and you won’t come up short. Those unexpected items add up. 4. Buy only on-sale items. If staples are on sale, try to stock up with a reasonable amount. But if you don’t need ten tins of diced tomatoes, don’t buy ten just because they’re on sale. 5. Create a weekly menu plan. This helps with time management as well as working with the grocery flyers. Keep it simple: seven breakfasts, seven lunches, seven dinners and snacks in between. Watch your time: if you have a night class, it makes no sense to make a dinner that takes an hour to bake. 6. Make a vegetarian meal once a week. Meat costs more. If you really must chew on something then try adding mushrooms, squash or tofu to your vegetarian meal. 7. Don’t buy junk food. You don’t need it. A chocolate bar costs more than two apples. Decide if it’s worth it. That’s your body we’re talking about. 8. Bring your own lunch. Don’t E buy food at the cafeteria. A burger at the college costs as much as eleven dollars. Can you really spare eleven dollars for five days? Can your waistline? 9. Use Supercook.com. There was a week when this writer subsisted on nothing but found food. Don’t know what that is? You will soon. If you are down to your last bits of food, enter your ingredients into Supercook.com and it will generate recipes for you. Hopefully you’re hungry enough to be a bit...creative. Bring your own coffee mug to school. At nearly two dollars each for coffee, at two coffees per day, it’s costing you $20 a week Monday to Friday. By bringing your own mug, you'll save about 10 per cent off the price of a coffee. 11. Brew your own. Better yet, take the $20 you would save by buying your own large tin of coffee and brewing it at home to take to school with you. Even better, give up coffee. Water is free. Remember, processed foods can end up being more costly than fresh foods and most of your money is going towards packaging. So even though a few purchases of mac ‘n’ 10. cheese and hot dogs seem like a good deal, you’re not four years old. Save your dollars and your health. A few minutes of planning out your menu and your weekly shopping list can result in savings that you can use towards other things. Like beer. Next week in the Students and Money series: saving on entertainment. Education minister drops the ball Why can’t a little funding for school sports be found? By Garth McLennan Sun, B.C. education minister Margaret MacDiarmid added to the growing list of Liberal bungles with one of the single stupidest comments in B.C. political history. In response to a query about the slashing of $130,000 worth of funding towards B.C. school sports, MacDiarmid had the following to say: “Rather than formal team sports, maybe people will be doing more walking or dancing or playing in parks.” Wow, is this a joke? Talk about rubbing salt in the wounds. Not only is she dropping grants that were the lifeline of several sports, she actually has the gall to condescendingly encourage student athletes to do more walking or dancing or playing in parks. That is just plain insulting. I get that there have to be cutbacks. I understand that in the current economic climate, some programs and areas are going to have to take a hit. That’s just a reality of the world we live in, and there is no reason why sports should be exempt from cutbacks. However, the week before the cuts to sporting programs were announced, grants and funding to a number of arts groups were cut as well. The public outcry was tremendous and the Liberal government hastily restored the funding to some 520 different arts groups that totalled around $20 million. Now, what makes arts more worthy of funding than high school sports? This 6 | n a recent interview with the Vancouver has nothing to do with the fact that I’m the sports editor of this newspaper, I’m asking this objectively. I understand that there have to be cuts all around, but arts groups can keep $20 million worth of funding but $130, 000 can’t be found for sports? That just doesn’t seem very fair. The value of a team on an athlete’s life can’t be understated. Aside from the natural value of teamwork, fair play and work ethic teams instil, there are tons of kids out there who would have fallen through the cracks if not for team sports. For most high school sports, a certain grade point average is required for athletes to continue competing. So, if the guy on the volleyball or rugby team can’t play in Saturday’s game if he doesn’t go to chemistry class, that’s a strong motivation to stay in school and work hard. Just think about how many of those kids wouldn’t care at all if it weren’t for high school sports. Now, I’m not underestimating the benefits that kids get from arts programs, because they probably play a very similar role in the lives of students. It just doesn’t seem fair that athletics have to bear the brunt of budget cuts, while arts funding escapes unscathed. Why are arts more deserving of tax payers’ dollars? Again, I’m not saying that sport shouldn’t have any money cut, I’m just saying that there is a blatantly unfair double standard going on here, and when you have politicians such as Margaret MacDiarmid spouting off lines like hers that only becomes more apparent. | don’t mean to say “I told you so” but... By Jay Schreiber ast winter, I forewarned the dangers L: installing a Tim Horton’s on the New West Campus. The satisfaction that comes to every college student with their coffee fix in before those dreaded 8:30 a.m. classes does make the day run smoother. However, there’s something we should all be aware of. On the first day of classes, 1 made my way from the 3rd floor down the great grey and yellow staircase that adorns the concourse and lo and behold, my prediction had become reality. There was litter, litter everywhere, an entire sea of maroon cups and brown paper bags. Tim Horton’s had successfully taken over the concourse with truckloads of garbage that made me swear off honey crullers for a week! Granted, the cheap, quick and dirty way that students get delicious food from Timmy’s is quite respectable in a college environment, but why leave discarded traces of the company everywhere? People please, we may be college students but can we keep the place from looking like a dump? This isn’t Metrotown! Tim Horton was a very well respected Canadian hockey player whose legacy lives on through his delicious bagels and affordable iced cappuccino’s. Cleaning up his garbage is only suitable to serve in his memory, even though he did play for Toronto, the trash team of the NHL. White Spot usually keeps things pretty clean in parallel to their name, and for some reason most of their packaging ends up in the garbage. Go, Nat Bailey, go! So remember to clean up your garbage. I for one don’t want to walk through hordes of packaging in the concourse. This brown paper bag in front of me is going where it belongs—in the trash!