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Alternative proteins, such as plant-based options, are becoming more popular in college dining halls. Some schools, like the University of Santa Clara, offer non-traditional options, while others, like Tufts University, may have limited choices for vegetarians. The University of California, Santa Cruz, has a food safety and nutrition specialist who plans menus to accommodate various dietary needs, including vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, and allergen-free options. The specialist also works with students to address their specific medical needs. Schools on the East Coast, like Harvard and Boston University, also offer plant-based options, but there may be a greater variety for meat-eaters. The goal is to provide sustainable and diverse food options for all students, regardless of their dietary preferences. Thanks for tuning in to the Current Power podcast, a podcast dedicated to all things alternative protein. I'm your host, Sienna. Today we'll be talking about how alternative protein, or foods that we can eat for protein that do not come from a living animal, are doing in college dining halls across the country. We'll hear how leaders in the field, such as the University of Santa Clara, offer non-traditional options, as well as how schools like DU and Tufts meet the needs of omnivorous students. To begin, I'm here at one of the dining halls at Tufts University to interview some students about their experiences with the dining facility. My name is Phoebe, I'm a vegetarian, and I go to Tufts University. For breakfast today, I had some pancakes. Other options are not many options. They have oatmeal, they also have some yogurt. They also have a toaster, but no bread in sight. For lunch today, they didn't have any tofu, so I just had to walk away with no protein on my plate. This conversation made me curious. Is this just how vegetarians and vegans eat on college campuses? To answer this question, we're headed all the way to the West Coast to talk to UCSC's Brianna Van Otterloo. Hi, my name is Brianna Van Otterloo. I'm the food safety and nutrition specialist for dining services. That position was newly created about just over five years ago, so I'm actually the first person who's held that position. I've been doing almost all of the menu planning for campus, and my general role is to support the executive chef and make sure that we have a good menu mix, not just in terms of vegan and vegetarian versus meat options, but also gluten-free, top-line allergen-free, things that students can eat when they're dealing with more serious medical issues, maybe like Crohn's or IBS. I'm also the person who meets with students that are coming with medical needs and kind of try to ascertain what we can do to support them, what things we already have available, if there's any changes we can make in the dining halls that could better support them, and if we do need to seek additional accommodations outside of dining halls and on-campus dining. Gosh, wow. You must have a ton of free time. Absolutely. Yay. So, what could people be interested in for their own sustainability goals? It's a little bit tied into, I think, what we'll be talking about today. A lot of that is, you know, identifying a long-term goal to go where, and I did want to do that, but then also looking at our products. Can we find things that maybe are, and, you know, therefore have less packaging or are in better packaging, or, you know, we work with companies that do, there's a lot more companies that are doing give-back programs. So, you know, we've purchased from a company called Happy Day Oat, and then, in turn, they're working with our basic needs department and donating back to students that are struggling with food insecurity. That's very impressive. Many young women that age do around body image and eating and all of that, and so I was really trying to work on my relationship with food, and I would challenge myself to, you know, find a vegetable that I've never used before. And it was really easy when I worked at the grocery store, because people would buy these vegetables that they hadn't seen, and I'd say, what are you doing with this? And then I'd get that, and I'd take it home and try whatever one of my customers had told me. I'd love if you could talk a little bit about what it was like to view the dining hall, how it's changed in comparison to when you were at school. Yeah. Coming back to dining services after having worked in other kitchens and with other cooking spaces, as well as cooking philosophy, it's been really interesting to see how dining has evolved. I feel like when I was a student, it was a little bit repetitive. There was the pizza station every day, the grill station every day, the paprika station every day, and then an entree, plus, you know, your salad bar, deli bar, and desserts. And since I've come on, I've really pushed and just making sure that for every entree that we have, if it's a meat-based entree, that we do have a vegan alternative. When I started, there was a lot of like, oh, we have a vegan option, there's tofu, there's tempeh. And, well, I work with vegan students who can't have soy, for example, and so how can we get things that aren't just like, oh, we threw some sauce on some tofu, but something that's actually exciting and nourishing and not just the same every day, and provides like a good whole food protein component. We also do a little bit of student outreach with a group of students called the Foodies, and we had like a, for a whole quarter, we would rotate through our different dining halls. We have five dining halls on campus, and we hosted what we called Veggie Voices, so any student that was following or interested in following a vegan or vegetarian diet was invited to come to these sort of open office hours and just get feedback on what they liked, what they didn't like, what they'd like to see more of. It sounds like the student perspective is really important when you're considering menu renovations and new items for the menu. Is there any sustainability goals or maybe like some school-wide or system-wide goals that you have for dining halls and menu planning? The other thing that really does help guide our purchasing and our menuing decisions are these system-wide policies and initiatives, and when I say system-wide, I'm referring to the entire UC system, so the 10 university campuses plus the five health centers. We have what we call our sustainable practices policy, but basically we're being asked at campuses to procure at least 25% of what's considered sustainable foods based on the HGSTARS criteria, and that's not exclusively plants, but it does really prioritize plants, and so it is actually a lot easier to meet those requirements through plant-based spend versus meat or dairy, you know, those are options. So, you know, it does come from students, from sort of like the ground up, and it also comes from the top down. You're listening to the Plant-Powered Podcast. We'll be right back. After talking to Brianna, I was still confused. Are alternative proteins only a thing in dining halls at schools on the West Coast? Is California really this ahead of the trend? As a born and bred New Englander, this prospect was alarming. East Coast, West Coast. Just kidding. But to answer these questions, I went to one of the dining halls at Harvard to see what I could find. Hi, my name is Candace, and I am a vegan. I'd love to hear a little bit about what a day of eating looks like for you as a BU student. So this morning, I went to one of my favorite dining halls on campus, and there's a lot of options available, but today I decided to go with a breakfast sausage, and all of the options that BU offers are, there's also like a plant-based option, so I ended up getting plant-protein breakfast sausage with a tofu scramble and a side of avocado. I would say that sometimes the food's not super ripe. While there's always a lot of variety, I would say that like it does feel unbalanced in terms of people who do eat meat. There's just like even more options, which doesn't necessarily feel fair. But yeah, I feel like I'm pretty eating well. What I learned today was that no one school has it perfect. Alternative protein is a newly emerging field that's working at warp speed to meet the needs of the ever-growing population of vegans and vegetarians that populate college campuses. Vegan food doesn't have to be boring or tasteless. There's so much to be explored. With a plethora of environmental benefits, making a commitment to vegan and vegetarian students is also a commitment to the planet. So, whether you're a lifelong vegan, a curious omnivore, or somewhere in between, I invite you to keep exploring, keep learning, and keep sharing the joy of vegan food with those around you. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Sienna, and you're listening to the Plant-Powered Podcast. Until next time, happy eating! you you you you you you you That's interesting. I did not know that the UC schools had that system in place, but I can imagine people in California are probably willing to make that happen. Yeah, so it's 25% by 2030, and then there's what they call a stretch goal to be at 30%. Wow. So it's like, we really want you, like, you have to be at 25, but we'd love you to be at 30. Yeah, yeah. What would you say? Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, so for last year, for our internal reporting, UCSC was almost at 40%. We were at 38.3%. Then for Real Food Challenge, which has a little bit stricter criteria, we were just over 20. So even if we use, like, a stricter criteria, we've almost met that goal. And it was campuses like UCSC already being or exceeding that goal that put the stretch goal into the language of that policy. Wow, that's really impressive. You guys are really, like, warriors in the protein field, it sounds like. So what would you say to the people who maybe are, like, coming back from the gym and they're like, I want to get my turkey? Like, when that happened, what was the response, like, from the dining team? Like, was there an encouragement to try alternative proteins? Or, I don't know, what did that response sort of look like? I think as much as we got that call, there was also the call for just more variety. So I did ask that the dining halls open up the deli and have, like, the sliced cheese and meat available starting earlier in the day, but not the full deli, just, like, do one rotating sliced meat a day. You know, we always have, like, a bacon or a breakfast sausage or a link or something like that. But simultaneously, we really beefed up our vegan options. So we do try, if we're going to add something to the menu or make that kind of change to a menu, it's like, okay, if we're going to add this, what gets taken away? Or, like, what gets added to the other side of the equation to keep it equal? So we brought on what's called, it's a hormonal product, but it's happy little plants, I think is what it's called. And it's, like, a vegan, soy-free, gluten-free, analog option. And so we put that into some breakfast scrambles to alleviate the tofu. And then we also added one that's, like, sweet potatoes, black beans, kale. And then I asked that they serve steamed rice at breakfast every morning as well. So if you wanted to have, you know, that more, like, complex plant-based protein, that you had that option available. And then, you know, whenever students complain about, like, oh, there's not enough whatever the option is, whether it's there's not enough high-protein foods in the morning, there's not enough vegan foods at lunch. Like, I'll go through the menu of, you know, whatever their home dining hall is and kind of highlight, you know, maybe you weren't aware of these options. You know, here's our nutrition calculator online. If you're concerned about, you know, hitting your macros, like, here's how you can look at that. If you find values seem irregular, you know, let me know, and I can look into our database since I manage all of that as well, like all the nutrition points. And it's really just, you know, a lot of, I think, particularly at this age, like a lot of people aren't used to walking into a cafeteria setting and knowing what's going to serve their needs. Like, you don't walk in and feel like, oh, here's your high-protein bowl, the way that you would, like, walk into a Jamba Juice or something, and it's like, oh, here's the five, you know, protein-powered smoothies that are going to help you out. So it's about education and engagement with the students. So I really just try to highlight what's existing, and then if it does seem like, oh, you know, we've gotten, like, three people have asked for this, then there's probably, like, 300 people that want it. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you're really engaged with the students, which I feel like that's a really important thing to do, especially if somebody's in charge of, like, the needs of so many students with, like, diverse needs. One thing I'm curious about is if you don't have this number offhand, I completely get it, but if you had to ballpark, what would you say the percentage of students are that, like, identify as having some sort of, like, dietary need or restriction? Yeah, I don't know. I do know there are a lot of students that just don't want to report, right? So I just met with a prospective student. You know, it's that time of year, everyone's trying to figure out where they're going to go. They've just gotten their acceptance letters, and so I get a lot of calls from parents and prospective students of, like, well, what are you going to be able to do for my child who has celiac or for me who has celiac or, you know, something like that, you know, following this diet, what are your options? And it was interesting talking with this person because even though, you know, and in this case it was celiac, it wasn't vegetarian, but they were very concerned. They're like, oh, well, if I have to go to the gluten-free refrigerator, is everyone going to know that I have celiac? Which I was like, first of all, why does it matter? Yes. You know, they might think you have IBS. Yes. Like, maybe take that as a win. But so there are, you know, I only know the students that are willing to speak up and talk to me and then or students that are, like, they try to navigate it on their own and they don't feel like they can and they want further accommodation, which for us is, you know, working with a disability resource center and housing and providing them access to a kitchen. And then it's like, okay, well, now you have to be ready to take on getting all your groceries and going to a separate place and cooking it and managing the leftovers and cleaning up in a way that everyone else who's just going to the dining hall doesn't have to do. So, you know, and that's a really big reason of why I've tried to make so many options available through the dining halls so the students don't have to go through that process. So I guess, I don't know, we have a little over about 9,000 students on meal plans and I work with a couple dozen every year that go through the whole accommodation process. But, again, it's like there are plenty of people who are just having their needs met and not reporting it in any way. I'm sure. It's hard to have your finger on the pulse of 9,000 students, I can imagine. Right, and it's like there's no sort of, like, intake form that ever gets shared with dining. Yeah, that makes sense. So that was all the questions that I had lined up, but I was wondering if there was anything, any, like, last points that you feel like are important to the picture of, like, dining at UCSC. If not, it's not a problem. Yeah, I'd just like to highlight, you know, we are absolutely always trying to improve and it's not just because something's trending. Like, I'm always looking at, you know, I get vendors contacting me all the time, you know, try this new product. And so when I see a new product, it's, you know, does it provide a more inclusive experience? Meaning, like, does it remove an allergen from something that we're already using? Is it cost effective? Is it actually healthful? Or is it just something really processed and ends up being high-fat, high-sodium? So we're both trying to stay up with the latest trends, but also not just following them because something's trending. And one thing we are pretty proud of is we have more, we're one of the self-operated dining departments in the UC system, meaning that we don't contract out to someone like Sodexo and we don't rely on third parties like Penn Express and Subway, which, you know, some of the campuses have a lot more of those, like, chains that the students are able to eat at. So we own and operate all of our premises. We have more than any other campus, so we just opened our 18th location, and that location is called the Owl's Nest, which was formerly one of the, you know, the hop-in cafes on campus. And we rebooted it, and it's now completely vegan and vegetarian, and we are pushing for it to go completely vegan just so that students, like, have a fully plant-based option on campus. And, you know, and it's been, like, when we look at new spaces, there's so many voices, right? We do have a lot of students who are advocating for can we get a kosher space, people who want a completely top-nine allergen-free space, maybe just a gluten-free space. But it seems, you know, both the loudest and the easiest to accommodate has been plant-based. Yeah. Has that opened or is that in the future? That opened the first of this month. So our first day back from spring break was April 1st, and we launched the restaurant. And it's cool. It's a bold concept. So you can go in the morning and get, like, an oatmeal bake or a frittata bake and then put all your different toppings on it, and then in the afternoon they have a bunch of different sort of, like, grain-based bases that you can add your toppings to. And we found some cool, like, croquettes. They're, like, veggie meatball alternative kind of. They're more like, I don't know, like a hush puppy, I guess I would call it. And so there's, like, mint and pea, which is really good. And then there was, like, a chipotle sweet potato black bean. And so you can put that on your bowl and then put a bunch of sauces in. And so it gives you all that, like, oh, I can go in and build my own thing, which gives students the sense of, like, autonomy and sovereignty over their dietary choices versus just going into the dining hall, which you can be creative in there. You absolutely can. It's a little bit different kind of knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. So we are proud of it. But even, you know, with the egg bake, for example, we're looking for a good product, right? We're looking for something like a just egg or a liquid egg replacement that we could make this, like, okay, how could we make this vegan? And, you know, we're just going to keep testing the menu and incorporating newer fun products and eventually phase out all the animal products. Wow. That's really cool. I think that's one of the hardest things to completely take out of your diet as a vegan or vegetarian, because so many of the egg alternative options are inedible, in my opinion. Yeah. There's not a lot of good replacement outside of baking, and even then it's like, oh, I don't know. It really wasn't the same. That's definitely not the same. Okay. I think we're just about out of time. But thank you so much for meeting with me. Your story was really, really interesting, and I enjoyed chatting with you. Well, thank you. Yeah, I hope I answered all your questions but didn't just talk about me too much. Oh, definitely. No, my podcast is only going to be, like, 15 minutes, so I think I have a lot of, like, good material to work from here. The title of the podcast, will you send me an episode? Oh, I would love to. It's going to be called The Plant-Powered Podcast. I'm likely only going to do, like, a few episodes, but it's like a final project for a class, so it'll be done by the end of this month, and I'll definitely send it along. Well, good luck to you. Thank you for your time, and also thank you for your time management. I really appreciate it. I can't imagine the things that you must have going on. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to meet with me. All right, Sienna, well, you have a great day, and I will look forward to hearing our chat soon. Best of luck with everything. Thank you.
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