Ohio University’s Culinary Services aims to serve students’ dietary needs, but one program has gone largely unused.
Students with dietary restrictions can request meals to be prepared separately in order to avoid cross contamination, said Dan Pittman, assistant director of Auxiliary Sales. However, fewer than 10 students at OU use this program.
The fixed pick-up times were not ideal for some students, including Shannon Welch, a senior studying political science.
“I’m really busy,” Welch said. “I didn’t have time for that.”
Welch has celiac disease, the most common dietary restriction that Culinary Services has tried to accommodate, Pittman said. She used the special diet program Fall Quarter of her freshman year, but cancelled it and ate in the dining halls after only one quarter, she said.
“(Eating in the dining halls) wasn’t an ideal thing, but I was able to manage,” Welch said. “It was a lot easier than scheduling a meal every day.”
To help improve the dining experience for special diets, Culinary Services has begun the construction of a gluten-free kitchen in the Central Food Facility and placed color-coded nutritional icons throughout culinary venues, Pittman said.
The Culinary Services Development Committee, a student-run organization, places comment cards in dining halls and encourages students to utilize social media to get their requests heard, Pittman said.
Many students with dietary restrictions are hesitant to talk to Culinary Services, said Mary Kate Gallagher, co-chair of the CSDC.
“I know a couple of the students I have talked to with special dietary needs don’t think that Culinary can help them,” Gallagher said. “But they really can.”
However, Culinary Services have not been able to cater to every student’s dietary need, such as Marika Bresler’s, a senior studying public relations, who has less common dietary restrictions.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of willingness once I explained that it wasn’t an allergy to try and work through that. It was complicated,” Bresler said.
Bresler has gastroparesis, a condition that slows her digestive process, making her unable to digest foods such as red meat and heavy proteins. Eating in the dining halls was not an easy task for Bresler and when deciding where to live her sophomore year, she was encouraged by Culinary Services to live off-campus, Bresler said.
“I think they could have done a little bit more, but I can understand why they wouldn’t want to,” she said.
Not every dietary need will be met, but by increasing awareness of the available dining options and encouraging students to participate in a conversation about their dietary needs, Gallagher hopes students will have a better dining experience.
“This is Ohio University Culinary Services,” Gallagher said. “Their job is to help people. Going to talk to them is a really good thing.”
Welch shares those sentiments.
“The more I have communicated with Culinary and asked other people to advocate for me, the more I have seen changes,” she said.
oh271711@ohiou.edu
