At HUDS, Vegetarians Are Caught Between Guac and a Lard Place

I will say this upfront: I am not a vegetarian. I have been, four years ago, for about six weeks while I had two pet ducks, Rico and Nico. Last year, before Hillel started offering Kosher lunch, I typically ate lunch in the dining halls. And for the most part, I ate vegetarian food while there due to restrictions involving non-Kosher meat.

The Crimson has already covered the woes of vegan food at Harvard extensively, and I stand with my vegan brethren. I empathize deeply because, for the past year, I’ve eaten almost exclusively vegan food — against my will.

Harvard University Dining Services, for as long as I’ve been at the College, has been guided by what I have termed an “all or nothing” philosophy. It operates on fundamentalist principles. Enter any dining hall and you’re met with two extremes: on one hand, enough meat dishes to sate a pride of lions; on the other, a small selection of veganized items — an uncanny valley amalgamation of fake meats and fake cheeses that comprises a pale imitation of the carnivore’s meal.

The vegan dilemma may stem from a misguided pursuit of culinary equality, where the primary objective is to ensure that vegan dishes attain naming parity with their meat counterparts. As if by simply calling something a “vegan tacos” or “vegan mac and cheese,” the vegans won’t suffer from crippling fear of missing out.

As a quasi-vegetarian by necessity, I often find myself caught between the two extremes. The invisible vegetarian is the forgotten casualty in this escalating conflict between culinary zealots.

HUDS forces their dishes into a sort of veganizing wood chipper. I obviously recognize that good vegan food exists, but that’s simply not what it feels like we are dealing with here. Rather than tasty, vegetable-based food, we get poor vegan equivalents of meat-based foods. The lonely vegetarian, time and again, falls by the wayside.

And so I often enter the servery, stare in dismay as I register the damage, concede defeat to the Manichaean forces of carnivory and veganism, and finally, inevitably, beeline for the salad, sandwich, or soup bar. Another day, another defeat at the hands of this binary.

Worse, my antagonists are not above deception. On a few unfortunate occasions, as I prepared to dole some mac and cheese onto my plate, I observed some sinister pink specks lurking within. Disconcerted, I glanced at the label: Mac and cheese with bacon bits. Bacon bits to a Jew are what garlic is to a vampire. And so, it was soup night. Again.

To be clear, I don’t blame the vegans for seeking better food, and I stand with them in their pursuit of justice and taste. Nor do I blame the carnivores for perceiving the vegan agenda as an encroachment on their way of life. Although it’s not my explicit aim, I would be delighted if just one of the many meat dishes were transformed into a decent vegetarian option. But I understand their frustration — and I’d be just as indignant if a kosher meat dish were replaced by an inferior vegetarian alternative.

The only party that might have a chance at healing this culinary schism — the vegetarian — has been left out in the cold, largely forgotten yet somehow still expected to mediate a food struggle no one asked for. But I’ll tell you one thing — I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure I don’t have to eat another serving of “Mindful” Chick’n Tacos.

Isaac R. Mansell ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Statistics concentrator in Kirkland House.