Purpose.: To identify impact of an online nutrition and physical activity program for college students. Design.: Randomized, controlled trial using online questionnaires and on-site physical and fitness assessments with measurement intervals of 0 (baseline), 3 (postintervention), and 15 months (follow-up). Setting.: Online intervention delivered to college students; a centralized Web site was used for recruitment, data collection, data management, and intervention delivery. Subjects.: College students (18–24 years old, n = 1689), from eight universities (Michigan State University, South Dakota State University, Syracuse University, The Pennsylvania State University, Tuskegee University, University of Rhode Island, University of Maine, and University of Wisconsin). Intervention.: A 10-lesson curriculum focusing on healthful eating and physical activity, stressing nondieting principles such as size acceptance and eating competence (software developer: Rainstorm, Inc, Orono, Maine). Measures.: Measurements included anthropometrics, cardiorespiratory fitness, fruit/vegetable (FV) intake, eating competence, physical activity, and psychosocial stress. Analysis.: Repeated measures analysis of variance for outcome variables. Results.: Most subjects were white, undergraduate females (63%), with 25% either overweight or obese. Treatment group completion rate for the curriculum was 84%. Over 15 months, the treatment group had significantly higher FV intake (+.5 cups/d) and physical activity participation (+270 metabolic equivalent minutes per week) than controls. For both groups, anthropometric values and stress increased, and fitness levels decreased. Gender differences were present for most variables. First-year males and females gained more weight than participants in other school years. Conclusion.: A 10-week online nutrition and physical activity intervention to encourage competence in making healthful food and eating decisions had a positive, lasting effect on FV intake and maintained baseline levels of physical activity in a population that otherwise experiences significant declines in these healthful behaviors.

Objective: The present study evaluated the restaurant and dining venues on and near post-secondary campuses varying in institution size.Design: The Nutrition Environment Measures Survey for Restaurants (NEMS-R) was modified to evaluate restaurants as fast food, sit down and fast casual; and campus dining venues as dining halls, student unions and snack bar/cafés. ANOVA withpost hocTukey'sBandTtests were used to distinguish differences between dining venues and associated institutions by size.Setting: The study was conducted at fifteen US post-secondary institutions, 2009–2011.Subjects: Data presented are from a sample of 175 restaurants and sixty-eight on-campus dining venues.Results: There were minimal differences in dining halls by institution size, although medium-sized institutions as compared with small-sized institutions offered significantly more healthful side dish/salad bar items. Dining halls scored significantly higher than student unions or snack bar/cafés on healthful entrées, side dish/salad bar and beverages offerings, but they also had the most barriers to healthful dietary habits (i.e. all-you-can-eat). No differences were found by restaurant type for NEMS-R scores for total restaurant dining environment or healthful entrées and barriers. Snack bars had more healthful side dishes (P= 0·002) and fast-food restaurants had the highest level of facilitators (i.e. nutrition information;P= 0·002).Conclusions: Based on this evaluation in fifteen institutions, the full campus dining environment provides limited support for healthy eating and obesity prevention. The quality of campus dining environments can be improved via healthful offerings, providing nutrition information and other supports to facilitate healthy eating and prevent unwanted weight gain.