USG initiative aims to encourage healthy eating

Under the new program, the Frist Gallery will offer a salad loyalty card that will give students a free salad for every 10 that they purchase.

The USG will also introduce a new promotion called Fresh Fridays, when select healthy options will be sold at discounted prices. Students using late meal to purchase salads will not be eligible for the loyalty card, though they can enjoy the Fresh Friday discounts, Director of Dining Services Stu Orefice said in an e-mail. Orefice said the discounts are expected to be around $1 per eligible item.

The initiative also seeks to expand the selection of Conscious Cuisine items, which are specially labeled because they follow a set of nutritional guidelines determined by the initiative. Conscious Cuisine guidelines encourage the use of whole foods, seasonal vegetables and complex carbohydrates, and aim to reduce fat and protein.

Planning for the three-pronged initiative was started last spring by the USG Nutrition Working Group, in collaboration with Dining Services, University Health Services and the Eating Concerns Advisors.

Derek Welski ’11, a Class of 2011 Senator and member of the USG Nutrition Working Group, said in an e-mail that the group wanted to develop an effective plan that would simply encourage students to eat more nutritiously.

Detailed nutrition information for foods prepared at the Frist Gallery will not be posted under the new program, Welski said, explaining that he believes doing so may not have a positive effect.

“Poor policy has the potential to exacerbate an unhealthy eating lifestyle,” Welski said. “A policy that posts the caloric and fat content of a prepared item may benefit one student or have the total opposite effect on another.”

Roselyn Kellen ’11 — the former co-president of the Eating Concerns Advisors, a peer advising group that operates under the umbrella of UHS — also worked on the initiative and said she believes it accomplishes its goals on many fronts. She also said she found the Conscious Cuisine program to be a good fit for the busy lives of college students.

“First, it will make it easy for students to identify foods that satisfy a set of guidelines,” Kellen explained. “Second, it will also educate students about why particular foods are more nutritious than others and what those foods have to offer. This will provide students with a different way to consider the nutritional value of two foods other than, say, how much fat each item has.”

Kellen added that the initiative effectively targets the high costs of nutritious foods at the Frist Gallery, which she cited as one of the main reasons students hesitate to purchase them in the first place.

On the business side, Orefice said he expects that increased customer traffic will offset the cost of the discounts offered as a part of the initiative. He noted that the plan is designed to encourage more nutritious decisions for all customers.

“We expect to see an increase in healthy food purchases not only at late meal, but with all meals,” Orefice explained.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Students said they welcomed the new initiative.

Kirsten Parratt ’13 said she is excited about the discounts and the salad loyalty card, but was skeptical of the reluctance to post nutrition facts. “I can’t see why people would eat more unhealthily after seeing them,” Parratt said. She also questioned the nutritional benefit of salads at the Frist Gallery, noting that many of the dressings offered are unhealthy.

Grace Pak ’13 shared Parratt’s enthusiasm for the salad loyalty cards.

“Even if you never get to 10, having the card still encourages you to get more,” Pak said.

She added that though she would personally find the information interesting, she thought posting fat and caloric values would be an ineffective tool in promoting nutritious decisions. “A lot of people, even when they know the nutritional contents, ignore them when making purchase decisions,” she explained.

Though the initiative has not yet been officially introduced, more than 1,500 loyalty cards have been distributed as part of a “trial run” to “make sure that the program is easily integrated,” Welski said.

The USG is planning an official kickoff event for the initiative to be held in November.

Clarification: An earlier version of this article omitted the title of Derek Welski ’11, who is a Class of 2011 senator.