<p>@tomofboston: in my original post I said I loved everything else about my school. I don’t know why you are quick to assume the worst about me or the fact I’m a brat.</p>
<p>Every college dining hall I’ve ever been to has a salad bar with fruit and veggies at every meal, and usually a station for PB&J and/or cereal in ADDITION to multiple main courses and sides. Does yours not have this? </p>
<p>I find it very hard to believe that students are routinely getting sick from the food and the school is just shrugging it off. If YOU are getting sick from the food, that’s something that seems to me should be taken up with a doctor. Maybe you have an actual medical condition, like celiac disease, that is contributing to this issue. If so, you can get guidance on what foods to avoid and what is safe to eat. But even if this were the case, your dining hall isn’t going to provide a wide array of gluten-free alternatives, and sometimes there probably won’t be something you like on the menu.</p>
<p>I’m also going to raise another possibility that I hope won’t offend you, as it comes from personal experience. Is it possible that you have an anxiety disorder that is leading you to develop psychosomatic symptoms? I struggled with hypochondria early in my college career during a stressful time in my life, and I can assure you that such symptoms can feel very real. I also know someone whose father had a disorder that convinced him that pretty much everything he ate would make him sick, which of course became a self-fulfilling prophecy. To this day, he keeps to a very limited diet set out by a nutritionist. </p>
<p>I think the reason you aren’t getting much sympathy is because normally, adults just cope with not being thrilled with cafeteria food. We also know that modern college dining halls usually have a pretty wide range of options. Yes, it is expensive, but you knew that going in. That’s why I’m wondering if something more is going on. For instance, most people who don’t have moral reasons for not eating chicken - which is often a pretty bland dish, and is made in enough varieties that most people should find SOME version of it that they like, or at least don’t hate - could manage to get down a healthy portion even if it isn’t their favorite food. The fact that you’re really grossed out by the mere thought of it based on an early childhood aversion is unusual to me, which leads me to question how much of this is a subjective issue that you need to work on vs. how much is a reasonable complaint against the school</p>
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<p>The dining hall does not offer a vegetarian entree each lunch and dinner?</p>
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<p>Didn’t know that fish was a vegetable…</p>
<p>But it does seem like you can make big salads with beans and other things in them.</p>
<p>The issue is not the food but the cost you make that clear so many times, you knew the price before you went there why did you attend if you had such a problem with the price?</p>
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<p>While that’s true, the vast majority of us who “suck it up and deal” with mediocre/crappy cafeteria food tend not to get seriously sick from eating it. </p>
<p>And by sick, I don’t mean merely intense dislike. </p>
<p>Fortunately, my LAC’s cafeteria food was actually pretty decent to enjoyable most of the time. </p>
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<p>While colleges have gotten much better about this since I attended college 15+ years ago, I wouldn’t be surprised that there are still colleges which give short shrift to providing adequate vegetarian/vegan options or worse, are ignorant of the requirements of such.</p>
<p>There was a recent lawsuit against a restaurant chain after french fries supposedly fried in vegetable oil were actually found to have been fried in meat-based oil. Hence, even some restaurants give short-shrift or worse, are ignorant/lie about complying with requirements. </p>
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<p>I’ve observed many people use the term “vegetarian” for folks who eat fish because they don’t know or find that label easier for others to relate to than pescaterian.</p>
<p>I’m not inclined to be as harsh on the OP as some others on this thread. My D1, a vegetarian, had problems with her college’s meal plan. There were vegetarian options at every meal, as advertised, but she found the vegetarian options unimaginative, poorly executed, repetitive, not particularly tasty, sometimes not nutritionally balanced, and just downright cheap in the quality of the ingredients and the quality of the dish. </p>
<p>So, yes, PB&J was always available, but she’s never been a big fan of PB&J and if that’s the vegetarian lunch option and you’re just not into PB&J, it can get really old, really fast. In addition to which, paying $8 for a PB&J sandwich can leave you feeling a bit ripped off. Yes, there were salads, but the salad ingredients were not particularly high quality and often not terribly fresh. I’ll never forget D1’s first Christmas home when she and her BF just ravenously devoured our salad, squealing with delight that “this lettuce is actually green!” It just broke my heart to think of what kinds of salads she had been putting up with. </p>
<p>Then there were the dinner entrees, like white pasta with marinara sauce, a once-a-week vegetarian staple–excuse me, where’s the protein? It’s not that she couldn’t meet the bare requirements of survival on what she got at the college dining hall, but she felt totally ripped off paying $12 for a poorly conceived and poorly executed vegetarian dinner that was clearly an afterthought and that she could have made at home for $3 or $4, while at the next table the lax bros were gorging themselves on helping after helping of expensive meat and paying exactly the same price.</p>
<p>Fortunately, D1’s college only requires freshmen to be on the meal plan. And even more fortunately, even as a freshman she had access to a full kitchen with refrigerator space, so she was able to buy groceries and do most breakfasts and lunches on her own (and we had sufficient financial reserves to allow her to do that, letting most of her meal plan go to waste). By sophomore year she was off the meal plan and eating healthier, tastier, and cheaper home-cooked meals, sometimes solo, sometimes with friends and apartment mates. She’s a good cook and she finds cooking relaxing, so it totally works for her as one of her principal leisure time activities, and she’s able to plan meals so that several hours of cooking on the weekends banks her many meals of leftovers during the school week.</p>
<p>Point is, college meal plans don’t work for everyone, but it depends on the college, and it depends on the individual. We never sought special dispensation from D1’s college meal plan; a deal is a deal. But it clearly didn’t work for her and she was able to devise suitable alternatives. Sometimes the answer isn’t, “Suck it up and deal with it,” but rather “Understand your options and find your own path.”</p>
<p>I’m convinced that the allegation that people get sick from the food is a classic tale that circulates every year at every school cafeteria. Someone gets a stomach virus, and the rumors start. Both my kids told me horror stories about their respective college dining halls, e.g., “Everybody gets diarrhea from the spaghetti!” I consider the whole thing–being stuck with mediocre food, complaining about it, and spreading rumors about it–to be an essential piece of that classic college experience that so many CC posters claim to be seeking.</p>
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<p>Beyond a couple of really far out crank classmates who wanted everything to be to their particular esoteric environmentally/politically standards, most of us had no issues with the cafeteria food in two dining halls and a snack/late night venue at my LAC. </p>
<p>Anyone who did had the option of the dining co-ops, some of whom went out of their way to cater to vegetarians/vegans. And that’s saying something considering there is a large vegetarian/vegan population which is well established and accepted in the campus culture. </p>
<p>Moreover, this experience also seemed to be missing from everyone I knew from colleges known for great dining services like Cornell and Tufts. Every student I’ve met from those two campuses raved positively about the cafeteria food. </p>
<p>And considering I’ve had firsthand experience visiting and eating at the latter campus, those praises were well merited.</p>
<p>I liked the comments about working with dietitian/nutritionist at the school - always ways to ‘improve’ food service. If truly medical situation, MD note. You are dealing with a big system and like the comments about feeding huge numbers of people and profit/loss situation with food service. Did not know about Amy foods. There is a list of healthiest schools’ food - my women’s college Alverno in Milwaukee is on that list of 10; we had outside food service, maybe like Aramark and manager (all four years) listened and responded. Schools do care when they are competing for students…that is why schools have improved so many facilities important to their students. Yes my DD1 at UAB had no way of eating the top two meal plans required of freshmen; she carried over what she could to the next semester, changed over to ‘dining dollars’, fed friends…I also tried to see if she could be classified as a sophomore due to her number of hours, so she could have a lesser meal plan, no luck. Now as a sophomore, she figured about 8 hot meals a week would do her, and that is working out well. I know I will have to suck up the first year meal plan for DD2 going to UA in the fall. When considering a school, maybe something can be worked out ‘ahead’ - so that it is a ‘win-win’ for the school and the student. Overall, boys consume more than girls in food quantity - some are still in ‘growth spurts’. Let’s hear back on how you managed to work things out where you feel like you are fed well enough (even with the overhead costs making the situation seeming to be high priced). Schools do care, but you have to learn how to navigate with the situation at hand and in a firm but polite manner through proper channels. It is a sign of maturity to work through things in a good manner.</p>
<p>“I’ve observed many people use the term “vegetarian” for folks who eat fish because they don’t know or find that label easier for others to relate to than pescaterian.”</p>
<p>As a quick aside to this thread, I am a pescaterian, and do that sometimes, and I can explain why some people do that. The number one reason is that some people don’t know what a pescaterian is, and when you are not eating meat and someone asks you why not, sometimes it’s just quiker to say, I am a vegetarian than to go into a whole explanation of what a pescaterian is.</p>
<p>Also, for me personally, even though I am a pescaterian, I don’t eat a lot of seafood (I am trying to make a transition to being a true vegetarian) - I don’t eat lobster, shrimp, claimari, etc., so, for example, when someone asks your dietary restrictions for dinner, it’s much easier to just say you are a vegetarian than to make the host listen to very specific food preferences.</p>
<p>Back to the orinigal thread :)</p>
<p>I feel your pain. My college has a pricey meal plan with not the best food. I just learned to live with it. There are barely any healthy options. Hopefully that chances for next semester. Hope it goes well for you!</p>
<p>My feeling on all of this is that most college meal plans are expensive, however it is not for the rest of your life. It is for the most part, one or two years unless you are required to live on campus and there is only one option. Younger d’s school had more limited dining options but over time the situation changed as there was a major initiative that was student-driven through student government to change the situation and provide more and better options, using more local produce and so on. Has this been addressed through student government or campus action groups at all???
In most schools as you move beyond freshman year, you have more options such as housing with kitchens, off-campus living and so on.</p>