After winning the title of Most Vegan-Friendly College in the U.S. in the small-school category last year, Northwestern has once again been nominated for the competition, which is sponsored by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
The winner will be determined by a bracket vote on www.peta2.com, the organization’s youth website. Voting for round two will end Oct. 24, and the final results of the contest will be revealed Nov. 21.
“Due to the drastic increase in options students expect when they sit down to eat, schools have had to pick up the pace,” said Ryan Huling, peta2’s manager of college campaigns and outreach. “Northwestern has definitely kept up with that.”
When picking the nominees for the contest, Huling said peta2 looks at the quality and quantity of vegan and vegetarian options. He said peta2 scans dining hall menus, contacting the school and soliciting feedback from students.
“After winning last year we heard from a lot of students who thanked us for highlighting options and said that they themselves noticed an increase,” Huling said.
Pam Yee, nuCuisine’s district manager of marketing, said dining halls have always had many vegan and vegetarian options in each food section. To choose products, nuCuisine menu planners research vegetarian food vendors’ recipes and look at student feedback from emails and comment cards, Yee said.
Many vegan and vegetarian students are pleased with the dining hall options.
“For the most part it’s actually really good,” Weinberg freshman Kevin Lewis said. “It makes me feel good because it’s just another way they’re being more accepting and making it easier to be a vegetarian.”
Weinberg junior Hazel Levine said it is important for schools to provide alternative foods, especially when there are so many vegans and vegetarians.
She also said the vegan food at NU is better than what she has experienced at other schools.
Still, Levine wasn’t completely satisfied with vegan and vegetarian offerings on campus.
She now lives off campus and cooks food for herself.
“I don’t think vegetarians on campus, because of the amount they have to eat just salad, are really getting their money’s worth,” she said.
SESP senior Alexa Razma also said she moved off campus to get better access to vegan and vegetarian foods.
“While there are options, they were very repetitive and you would eat pretty much the same thing for multiple meals everyday, ” Razma said. “Especially when you are vegan, you need to be aware where your nutrient sources are coming from to maintain your wellness. I didn’t find nutrients in dining halls enough for a well-rounded diet.”
For Weinberg freshman Patrice Matthews, convenience trumps quality.
Matthews said it’s not necessarily the food she likes, but rather the flexibility of the dining halls.
“I know that just going out (to restaurants) makes it hard to find vegetarian options,” she said. “So being able to swipe in and get it so easily makes it less of a hassle.”
Razma said she thinks it’s important for non-vegetarians to understand they can benefit from a plant-based diet.
“I’ve heard the argument that ‘I’m an athlete, I could never be a vegetarian’ and ‘I would get sick all the time,’ which is completely a myth,” she said. “You can eat really well and be really healthy as a vegetarian; you just need to know the types of things you need to eat to get a variety.”
NuCuisine’s district dietitian Theresa Laurenz said one main concern is making sure vegetarian and vegan students get necessary dietary nutrients.
“We need to cater specifically toward them because simply not eating meat or dairy means that you need to get other nutrients that sometimes other people don’t get,” she said. “We need to make sure they’re getting a complete meal other than just eating a salad bar and some brown rice and calling it a meal.”
Lorenz encouraged students to continue to give feedback to nuCuisine through comment cards or boards in dining halls and to join food committees. Students can vote for NU on the peta2 website.
