Video by Dan Neligh and Jessica Goldberg
By Kate Kunkel
Living on your own for the first time isn’t easy, especially when your belly constantly screams for food while the empty wallet sitting in your pocket offers no help.
Several students living in Taylor Place have found that making smart nutrition choices is much trickier without mom around to whip up home-cooked meals. As limited stovetops and ovens are available in Taylor Place, most of their meals come from the dining hall or the limited downtown locations allowing them to spend Maroon & Gold dollars.
Andrew Berens, a microbiology freshman, said downtown students have difficulty putting variety into their diets.
“I feel like the options are more limited than they should be given the importance and emphasis put on nutrition and given that there are a lot of different people living in Taylor Place,” Berens, who lived in Tempe first semester, said. “The food’s not of low quality, there’s just not very much of it.”
Several students agreed the most popular meals chosen on a regular basis include pizza, burgers and fries. Most also admitted they never check the nutrition facts on such food items.
According to the online nutrition information offered by the dining hall, a typical 3 oz. hamburger packs about 98.79 mg of cholesterol. In comparison, McDonald’s online nutrition information says its 3.5 oz hamburger contains only 25 mg of cholesterol.
The numbers show no improvement when it comes to Taylor Place’s pizza. One slice of pepperoni contains 27.45 mg of cholesterol, while the pepperoni pizza many students order from Domino’s contains only about 20 mg of cholesterol.
Neil Hultgren, an exercise and wellness freshman, noted his concern with the content of dishes in the dining hall.
“Doesn’t McDonald’s have to show their nutritional facts?” Hultgren said. “I think Taylor Place should have to show their nutritional facts, especially if they’re not healthy for us. You don’t really know what you’re eating.”
Alexis Roeckner, a sustainability freshman, was able to get an exemption from the meal plan due to her hypoglycemia, but said “it was a very difficult process.
“They do their best to feed us and they have a certain amount of food they have to produce, but it’s nothing I can digest,” Roeckner stated.
“They process the food so they can serve many people, and sometimes it’s quantity over quality, unfortunately,” she said. “They do have fruit and salad, which is pretty good, but unfortunately you just can’t live off of that. After awhile it kind of gets old.”
Nutrition Lecturer Melinda Johnson said there are some actions students can take to stay healthy in the dorms. She said the key is balance and moderation.
“As long as you balance out the rest of your day by eating other healthy foods, it’s okay to eat (burgers and pizza) once and a while,” Johnson explained.
Johnson also said Taylor Place can only serve what students will eat.
“On the side of the dining hall, the trick is getting people to eat (the food),” she noted, adding, “If students aren’t going to eat it, the company loses money, so they’re stuck making what students demand.”
Johnson stressed the importance of getting fruits and vegetables into students’ diets to “dilute some of the high fat you might have if you also choose a hamburger.
“If the student has little bit of savvy on what’s healthy and what’s not so healthy, then the student does have the opportunity to choose healthy foods and eat a relatively healthy diet,” Johnson stated.
Brandi Heatherly, the district manager for Aramark, said in an open forum, when it comes to students’ food choices, “it’s a two-way street.
“We offer healthy items (in the dining hall), obviously, with the salad bar, the deli, the home zone, the different places,” Heatherly said. “We do offer healthy options … but it’s about all food fitting in moderation. So we’ll continue to offer these things, but we won’t tell people not to order what they want to.”
Still, many Taylor Place students said they feel that the limited dining options keep them from making healthy choices.
Jennifer Valenzuela, an exercise and wellness sophomore, said she has a difficult time creating well-balanced meals and watching her calorie intake in the Taylor Place dining hall, especially since “they don’t really give you the calorie amount.
“It’s hard because you don’t have options here,” she said. “You’re a college student and you can only eat what they serve. If you’re hungry, you’re going to eat something.”
Krystal Nelson, Aramark’s marketing manager, said in an open forum that Aramark wants to make improvements in nutrition during the next semester.
“It’s definitely the students’ choice, and some people always naturally go to what they want to go to,” she said. “But with a nutritionist on board, we’re really trying to amp it up for the fall across all four campuses.”
Contact the reporters at news@downtowndevil.com
Mauro Whiteman contributed video graphics and reporting for this post. Caroline Porter contributed to the videos of this post.
