Sure, they can be responsible for their own actions. Doesn't mean the schools have to provide them the option to be actively harmful to their health. They're adults (as mentioned in another comment). If they want to buy a few cases of Coca Cola and drink that instead of water every day for 4 years, that's their prerogative. No school should stop them from making such a terrible, stupid mistake, but no school should present that to them as part of the meal plan either.
Yup, likewise I knew a guy who flunked out his sophomore year because he spent all of his time playing Quake 2 on the dorm's LAN. The university offered plenty of classes he could have been spending his time on, and he chose differently. Only so much you can do to save a man from himself.
There's a little bit of cognitive dissonance going on here. If they're responsible for their actions, and they're adults, why are you taking an option away from them in fears that they're "making a mistake"? This is universally seen as hand-holding.
The option isn't taken away. They can go to the grocery store if they want. That's still an option. There's no cognitive dissonance. As an institution, a university is not required to provide every option to its students. It, similarly, shouldn't bar students from making choices they want to make.
EDIT: And if they make choices that turn them into unsuitable students (poor grades, arrests, whatever), the institution is free to suspend them as appropriate.
This is a trinary variable, not a binary one. Sure, between the two options of giving people freedom to make their own mistakes versus applying coercion for their own good, I'm in favor of the first option. But there is a third: soft paternalism, giving people freedom to do what they want but setting things up so that the right choice is the easiest. Such evidence as we have, indicates that it works very well.
That's a bit of a straw man. You can choose alcohol or no alcohol. But you don't choose mac n cheese or not -- you choose mac n cheese or some other food.
Choosing to offer only healthy foods at a location provided by the school does not preclude the students getting unhealthy food anywhere else. It's just making a healthy choice available, not making unhealthy choices unavailable.
My last year of college the university finished a brand new dining hall and forced every student living on campus to buy an expensive meal plan, justifying this by saying students ate poorly and the meal plans would force them to eat a balanced diet. Well, my diet was perfectly fine - was being the key word, as I can't resist cookies and ice cream for long when I am surrounded by them at a cafeteria - and as a matter of fact, a lot cheaper. A lot cheaper, because the basic meal plan only got me one meal a day, so I still had to buy groceries.
