Renovated Dining

What’s the use of renovating your dining halls if you don’t renovate the food that comes with them? The non-culinary advances that Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) made over the summer are just the tip of the iceberg lettuce.

In response to student feedback, and close work with nutrition experts, HUDS has developed a new fall menu, incorporating a wide variety of cultural and healthful dishes that promise to both please and trim students’ stomachs.

First and foremost, trans-fat is out. Everything from muffins to sour cream coffee cake to pancakes is free from trans-fat. In the most current health craze, this partially hydrogenated oil is as forbidden and taboo as bread to Atkins dieters. The Tater Tot is back in full force—but Napoleon Dynamite disciples, be warned: your “Tots” are now trans-fat free and have assumed the alter-ego of “Golden Nugget.”

HUDS has more than responded to the student outcry for healthy foods. Acting on student interest in greater availability of fresh fruit, HUDS now offers fruit at lunch and dinner, in addition to nuts and dried fruit in sealed, allergy-sensitive containers. HUDS is also promoting a portion-size education project, so that we can finally understand that 27 buffalo wings are a bit more than one serving.

But for those who still enjoy overindulgence, regardless of serving size or strange looks from fellow diners, pizza, wings, and other comfort foods will be available every other Friday night, in response to student wishes for less healthy food.

New tasty food aside, we also commend HUDS for their Food Literacy Project (FLP).

According to HUDS Communications Coordinator, Jami M. Snyder, “The FLP aims to educate consumers ‘from the ground up’ and focuses on four inter-connected areas of food and society: agriculture, nutrition, community and food preparation.”

Under the FLP, HUDS has also increased local buying, which has, according to Snyder, a “threefold positive impact.” It supports the local economy, decreases use of fossil fuels burned during shipping, and helps preserve the tradition of regional agriculture.

It is clear that HUDS is willing to listen to students suggestions, and in order to make the dining halls and meals better and better, we urge students to fill out those comment cards and respond to the bi-annual surveys.