Errors in Food Labels Confuse Diners

First-years who hoped to ward off the “Freshman 15” by eating dining hall food with zero calories and no fat may be in for a bit of a disappointment.

Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) discovered yesterday the source of its recent mislabeling of dining hall food nutrition information—a problem with the Web-based computer program that provides the statistics that go on nutrition cards.

The program has been printing on nutrition cards false information for several weeks now, often mislabeling the percentage of calories from fat with numbers in the thousands or putting zeroes in various nutritional categories.

After HUDS discovered the bug, a message was sent out to all the dining hall managers instructing them to stop printing the cards and to simply begin labeling the food items without nutrition facts. The practice will stay in place until the server is fixed.

“I just appreciate students’ patience as we try to make sure that we get this fixed,” said HUDS spokesperson Alexandra McNitt. “We don’t want to have bad information out there.”

Many students have noted frustration with the nutrition information recently.

Caroline T.M. Curtis ’06 said she thought the labels seemed accurate earlier in the fall but have dropped off lately in plausibility.

Others complained that entire dishes and condiments have been mislabeled all year.

“One time I put orange jello on my sandwich because they said it was mayonnaise,” said William D. Johnson ’06.

Such problems have also caused trouble for students with dietary restrictions.

Hebah M. Ismail ’06, a devout Muslim, said she accidentally ate pork meatballs at Annenberg because the dish was labeled as beef.

“I went and asked three different people what they were, and they all told me that it was 100 percent beef,” Ismail said.

She said she was not aware of the fact that she had eaten pork until a Muslim dining hall worker alerted her to the mistake the next day.

Following the incident, Ismail felt obligated to stop eating meat at all of the dining halls and sent an e-mail complaint to the manager of Annenberg.

“I’m very mad,” Ismail said. “It’s not just a problem with mislabeling but I went and asked [HUDS workers] and they all told me wrong information.”

McNitt said such mislabeling of entire dishes typically occurs in areas of the cafeteria where many different food types are crammed together in a tight place, such as the dressing area of the salad bar.

When foods are not labeled at all, McNitt said, it is often a decision made by individual dining hall managers when they feel the food service area is too cluttered and that providing labels would just add to the overall confusion.

The Web-based program HUDS now uses to provide nutrition facts has been in place since 2000. The new system greatly streamlined the organization’s labeling process and there had been no problems with the system until the past few weeks, McNitt said.

From 1994-2000, HUDS’ system required all nutrition cards to be updated every time there was a menu change.

“It has always been incredibly difficult because we have literally thousands of menu items in our databanks,” McNitt said.