Dining Services: Special orders don’t upset us

“The dining hall is the reason why I’m not vegan anymore,” said Jones, who is now independent, adding that she subsisted mostly on peanut butter, soy milk and fruit when she had a meal plan. “I basically couldn’t eat a varied diet and get all the nutrients that I needed,” she explained.

As the University requires all students to sign up for meal plans during their freshman and sophomore years, Jones said she felt she wasn’t getting her money’s worth. “I was being forced to pay for everyone else’s meat, which I normally wouldn’t support,” she said. As a result, she gave up veganism. “I decided to eat [meat] anyways since I was paying for it,” she explained.

The Department of Dining Services (DDS) has made efforts to accommodate students who follow vegetarian and vegan diets, DDS director Stu Orefice said in an e-mail. Recent surveys conducted by DDS indicate that 6 to 8 percent of students on meal plans follow a vegan or vegetarian diet, Orefice said. It is not uncommon, however, for more than a third of the menu options at any given dining hall to be vegan or vegetarian, he added.

Students with moral and ethical justifications for their food choices are not the only ones who face challenges when looking for viable food selections. In addition to trying to accommodate vegetarian and vegan students, Dining Services also tries to accommodate students with other dietary restrictions, including those who keep kosher, have severe food allergies or have celiac disease. While some students noted opportunities for improvement, Dining Services is very receptive to special dietary needs, students said.

“Princeton has one of the more robust programs with respect to accommodating dietary restrictions,” Orefice said in an e-mail, noting the online interactive menu, recipe listings and personal interaction with parents and students as examples of Dining Services’ efforts to aid diners.

“Our team is dedicated to ensuring that the products we offer are labeled correctly and the proper utensils are in place,” he said, adding that students with allergies or other special dietary needs are encouraged to ask a staff member for further clarification.

Oscar Hyde ’12, who is allergic to a wide variety of common food items, including wheat, rye, oats and artificial flavorings, said Dining Services’ flexibility and willingness to accommodate his special dietary needs were a major reason he chose to come to Princeton.

“My final two choices were Princeton and Cambridge in London,” he explained, adding, “Cambridge told me I would have to cook for myself.” When he came to Princeton for pre-frosh weekend, however, the University dining staff at Rocky/Mathey prepared special meals for him, he said. Hyde added that currently, the dining hall chefs prepare food for him every day, and he does not eat anything that is not made especially for him.

“They make ... what I would like that ... day,” he said of the dining staff. “I’m really happy that there’s a huge variety of foods for me.”

People preparing food in Dining Services aren’t always so aware of the intricacies of students’ needs though, Maya Goodwin ’12, who is vegan and eats in the dining halls, said. “There was some food on some trays that looked like it was vegan, and so I asked, ‘Is this vegan?’ But [the dining services employee] didn’t know what veganism was,” she said, explaining that she also noticed that the supposedly vegan-friendly saute stations didn’t take the care to avoid contamination by meat in vegan foods.

But Sean McGinnis ’11, who has celiac disease, which means he can’t eat any wheat products, said he has had a positive dining hall experience overall, adding that being able to check ingredients of food items online and talking to chefs at Frist Campus Center and other dining halls have helped manage his diet.

Dining Services has also responded positively when approached with students’ concerns, some students said.

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“I met with the head chef of Butler and Wilson, and he was really great to take my concerns into consideration,” Goodwin said. “As a result of that meeting, that particular dining hall is more cautious about labeling food items, which helps vegans greatly,” she added in an e-mail. Goodwin noted some immediate changes, such as the introduction of vegan sorbet to the menu, as further evidence of efforts made by the staff of the Butler and Wilson dining halls to address students’ concerns.

Goodwin said, though, that the University could do a lot more to meet the standards of its peer institutions in accommodating special dietary needs. “A lot of universities have all-vegetarian, all-vegan dining halls available,” she explained. SUNY Purchase in New York has an all-vegetarian eatery, and the University of Florida has a vegan station in each of its dining halls.

Vegan-friendly dining halls are also a focus of the Princeton Animal Welfare Society, to which Goodwin belongs, as part of its larger campaign to promote veganism on campus. “If Dining Services doesn’t have options, it’s going to be far more difficult to show that being vegan is worthwhile,” Goodwin said.

But the University can only provide so many options, Jones said. “While it affected me negatively, I don’t actually think the dining hall needs to change anything,” Jones said. “They would have to completely change everything that they do to provide for a small group of people.”