In this episode of What is Global Health, Eliana Weinsaft speaks with Barnard student Jem Hanan and The Cooper Union School student Joseph Hedaya on factors that make it difficult to eat food due to dietary restrictions and meal plan regulations on college campuses.
College students were interviewed for this podcast to hear their thoughts on eating at their college campuses. Jem Hanan is a first year student at Barnard college. Joseph Hedaya is a fourth year architecture student at The Cooper Union School.
Transcript (via Sonix)
Eliana Weinsaft: [00:00:09] Hello and welcome to the next episode of What Is Global Health, a student run podcast series by the Journal of Global Health at Columbia University. In this series, we interview experts in the field to learn more about topics ranging from Covid 19 to menstrual health and hygiene. We aim to factor all elements of identity, race, gender, sexuality, religion and more into discussions of global health. My name is Eliana Weinstein and I’m a first year chemistry major at Barnard College. I got to speak to a few students from several universities about the dietary restriction challenges they face at dining halls on their respective campuses. Let’s get started. If you’re like me and you don’t have allergies, a lot of the time you don’t realize how hard it is to eat outside of your home if you have dietary restrictions until you get to college. By the time people with dietary restrictions enter college, they’ve often figured out foods they can eat and have their home kitchens prepped so that they can just open the fridge and pull out whatever they want. Entering college is a difficult transition for everyone, but having a dietary restriction or allergy can make it difficult to eat when food options are communal. Dining plans at different schools can vary. Some schools, like Columbia, will mandate that students be on a full meal plan so as to make sure they do not have to worry about food insecurity while focusing on school.
Eliana: [00:01:36] Entering college can be a stressful environment. Worrying about where you’re getting your next meal should not be a concern for any student. The problem with this system is when dining halls do not accommodate those who need special diets or have allergies, students may end up paying more for this mandatory meal plan than they would for a meal they could actually eat. The cost of a dinner at [00:02:00] Columbia Dining Halls is roughly $18. Students with dietary restrictions could pay much less for ingredients. They could eat, while also having access to kitchens in the residence halls. But because of this mandate, many students are pressured to swipe into places where they can’t eat a full meal. Here to talk about her experience with Barnard’s mandated meal plan is Jem Hanan.
Jem Hanan: My name is Jem Hanan. I am a first year at Barnard and today I’ll be talking about my experience with the dining halls. So to list all of my intolerances, they would be gluten, dairy, oats, corn, um, soy if it’s like a lot of it. Um, and then I also keep kosher. So that’s quite limiting in terms of what I can eat. And that’s not to say that the dining halls don’t accommodate at all.
Jem Hanan: [00:03:04] There’s the Pure Eats section of Hewitt and the Avoiding Gluten section in John Jay, but, um, most of the time, like the main protein at John Jay is meat, which I can’t have because I keep kosher. Um, and the Pure Eats really has a lot of the same stuff. Um, and a lot of the times, even if I eat something and, you know, the reaction isn’t super immediate. Um, like, I will have a lesser reaction to oats than I do to gluten or dairy, which is like a lot more immediate. It weakens my stomach regardless. So things that I not wouldn’t necessarily be sensitive to, I become more sensitive to for seemingly no reason, and it’s incredibly frustrating. Um, just to deal with and like, not know where it’s coming from and to constantly [00:04:00] feel bloated and feel kind of sluggish. And the requirement for the premium meal plan just made absolutely no sense when the only thing I knew I could eat day in, day out, breakfast, lunch and dinner was the chickpea stew and the rice sometimes. Um, without feeling, you know, like I was putting something in my body that didn’t want to be there. So I reached out to bursar to see if I could get off the meal plan. And then that required me to register with cards and get a whole medical note from my doctor.
Jem Hanan: [00:04:44] And that also is thankfully, my doctor is very, you know, understanding and accommodating of my food intolerances, even though it’s not celiac. Um, which is very easy to or not very easy, but easier to monitor and to have a medical note for. Um, but, you know, the food industry in the US is it’s not really well regulated. And many, many people are probably way more intolerant to things than they think they are. And the medical community in the US just hasn’t really caught up to that yet. So. So getting a medical note from a licensed practitioner is not always the easiest thing to do. Thankfully it was for me, but even then, the entire process took another month and a half. I’d say total after all the meetings, just so that I could get off of the most premium meal plan and pay, you know, $15 a meal, swipe to have the same meal every single day, which just isn’t healthy. And I didn’t feel healthy, I didn’t feel good, and it [00:06:00] just felt incredibly the whole system, the whole just felt really frustrating. Um, finally, when I did go off of it, I, you know, had extra money to then spend on things that I could actually eat. You know, even $115 meal swipe, I can get a whole loaf of gluten free bread and that can last me for weeks or a week.
Jem Hanan: [00:06:29] Um, but then there’s the other part, which is the social aspect of the dining halls, which now all of a sudden is taken away because I’m not going as much. And when I am, I know that my options are incredibly limited. If I want something cooked or warm, it’s still the stew. And if I don’t, then it’s, you know, the lettuce and the vegetables at the salad bar. And most of the dressings also are probably unsafe. So it has to be with olive oil. And that is even if there is any left by the time I get there. And yeah, that’s just a reality that I have to deal with being, you know, intolerant and sensitive to all these different food groups. And it’s just not super accommodated to. Um, at the school. And yeah, so there’s really there’s no winning. It’s just kind of making it work.
Jem Hanan: In Jem’s case, getting off the meal plan was a prime concern. However, some schools have even more restricted options in terms of what there is to eat. If schools are smaller, there may be fewer dining hall options available. This can pose big issues if you have allergies or dietary restrictions, especially when there might be only 1 or 2 meal options on the menu and only slight variability in what there is to eat.
Eliana Weinsaft: [00:07:53] For many students with allergies, limiting what you can eat to dining hall food results in only being able to eat foods [00:08:00] that look safe or appealing, resulting in a lack of full nutrition gained at each meal. In general, the smaller the university, the less options there are to eat. This can be a limiting factor in choosing which school to attend as a senior, when there is so much to be gained from being at a small institution, or going to an institution that you have fully thought out and chosen. The Cooper Union School has a unique model in which it was originally designed to be a small liberal arts college which offered the top students in the country degrees at no cost. This model has since been changed financially in terms of tuition, but the principle of minimalism of a school has remained. Famously, Cooper Union has no meal plan at all, throwing students into adulthood early on their freshman year by making them responsible for feeding themselves while already going through a difficult transition. Coming from other states may also pose a problem, as food in New York City is extremely expensive. Here to speak on his experience with this issue is fourth year architecture student Joseph Hedaya.
Joseph Hedaya: [00:09:12] Hi, my name is Joseph Hedaya and I’m a fourth year student of architecture at the Cooper Union. Ernest Chan and School of Architecture. I personally have a few dietary restrictions, including keeping kosher, and sometimes dairy tends to give me stomach aches, but nothing out of the ordinary. The Cooper Union does not provide any meal plans to students, and also doesn’t provide housing past the first year, so that always made finding food and drinks complicated at school, especially given our tough schedule. During my first year, I was in the dorms and I found a lot of bonding and meeting friends through going to grocery stores, buying food, and cooking it together in the dorms. They were sort of dorm parties. Every dorm had a full kitchen, so cooking at home wasn’t much of an issue, although get togethers would be slowed down due to Covid sometimes [00:10:00] back in 2022 2021. In the dorm room, we were also getting tested every week and had to fill out forms every time I wanted to get in and out of the building, which also complicated having friends over and people who weren’t typically in the dorms in the building. The only food option on campus is Frankie’s, located in the new Academic building at 42 Cooper Square, on the fourth floor at the top of the main staircase.
Joseph Hedaya: [00:10:26] It isn’t really much of an option or a meal plan. They usually have 3 or 4 different pre-made dishes, such as salmon or spaghetti, and they’ll preheat it for you in a microwave. It runs about 8 or 9 bucks each meal, and there are also beverages available for like $2. Things such as your usual Snapple and such. Given that there is no meal plan, many students, including myself, usually go to delis or Ray’s Pizza across the street on Saint Mark’s. Uh, tuberose is also a good dollar pizza option, so a lot of students would pick that up typically. Um, and the East Village does provide some good food options, but it’s hard to find a filling lunch for under $10 with a beverage in the area. I personally find that I eat a lot of bagels and not very, uh, nutritious things along with a lot of snacking. The lack of a meal plan and nowhere to eat is also made more complicated by our schedules. We typically don’t have time to eat before our pin ups in the architecture school, which happened around 2:00 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Um, the days where I do have to pin up, I usually won’t end up having anything or any drinks honestly, until after it. Pinups around 6 p.m.. Um, one thing I’ve gained from this experience of not having a meal plan or a set lunches in academic buildings is learning to cook for myself and finding crafty ways to get cheaper food in the area.
Joseph Hedaya: [00:11:54] At first it was a it was a bit complicated, but I began to get into a groove of cooking at [00:12:00] home and also finding staple restaurants that I often visit places such as B and H, sweet greens, always good. Chopped. Me and my friends typically have Chipotle Thursday night all off campus. No meal plan and no, um, student discount. But it’s not always easy to cook at home. Sometimes there’s no time with all the work we have in our own schedules. Um, also, finding affordable produce gets tougher in the East Village. The Wegmans that recently opened nearby has made things a little easier. There was also Trader Joe’s and West Side Market, which a lot of students tend to go to. Um, but me and my friends still manage to try and eat together. We feel it’s an important social. It’s social space and studio and meals always make it a better thing. Although of course, we don’t have a specific meal place on campus. A lot of us will eat in studio in between classes, and sometimes we’ll go out to get food together. But, uh, yeah.
Eliana Weinsaft: [00:13:04] There’s a lot to consider when thinking about food at school. When looking at these two extreme ends, someone who wants a meal plan where there is no option for one, and someone who has to fight to get off the meal plan because they cannot eat the food that it offers, one truth emerges. College meal plans were designed to make sure eating and keeping students alive isn’t a problem. Being a college student comes with a multitude of difficulties, and food shouldn’t be one of them. Colleges should have more inclusive sources of food so that none of their students should have to worry about eating a meal. Thanks for tuning in to this installment of What is Global Health. We hope you enjoyed and as always, be on the lookout for new episodes every other week. Also, be sure to check out our online blog posts on our Columbia Journal of Global Health website, and we’ll see you soon.