Student activists push for better vegetarian meals

Two years ago, the Yale Dining Services (YDS) catalog stated that lacto-ovo vegetarian and vegan hot food and sandwich choices would be offered at every meal. According to YDS, however, this was a misprint, and they cannot guarantee that this will be the case.

The lack of adequate vegetarian and vegan meal options at meals has raised concern this year, and the Yale College Vegetarian Society (YCVS) has arranged meetings with YDS to discuss improving meal options.

DAVID GEST/YH The Yale College Vegetarian Society complains that students are shortchanged by dining halls with limited vegan options.

According to YDS Director David Davidson, however, every effort is being made to accommodate vegetarians. The existing policy of YDS is to provide "at least one featured vegan entrée at every lunch, brunch, and dinner in all broad plan units. We do not guarantee that there will always be both a vegetarian and a vegan choice, but many vegan entrees are popular enough among lacto-ovo vegetarians that they will happily eat the vegan items."

YDS does admit, however, that it does not have a hot vegan option at breakfast, but according to Davidson, "in the past, when we planned Commons' menus [with such options], so few customers selected the hot vegan entrée that it was a waste of resources."

David Corson-Knowles, TC '03, one of the co-founders and co-presidents of the YCVS, insists that despite whatever Dining YDS may claim, its vegan options simply "are not in the dining halls, even when they are on the menus."

According to Davidson, "Instances where there is not a vegetarian or vegan option when a customer arrives are because of a local problem [where] the unit miscalculated and ran out. Units are required to replace any entrée that ran out with an appropriate equivalent." He urges students who are dissatisfied with this system to speak with their individual dining hall managers.

Nevertheless, the variety of the vegetarian and vegan meal options remains limited, according to YCVS Co-president and Co-founder Clark Freifeld, DC '01. "Although the dining halls are required to have at least one vegan entrée at dinner and usually at lunch," Freifeld said, "there are sufficiently few vegan options that vegans have a difficult time finding an adequate quantity and variety of food."

The YCVS also argues that, given current meal options, the health of those choosing not to eat meat, especially vegans, may be in jeopardy. YDS dietician Karen Dougherty calls this claim unfounded, explaining that she "truly believes that vegans at Yale get enough protein provided the person consumes enough calories to maintain weight."

Davidson agrees, saying that "the concern about [lack of protein] in a vegan diet is unfounded—too many Americans are obsessed with protein. Vegan diets are often lower in protein than standard American diets, but that does not mean the vegan diet is deficient."

Because students living on-campus are required to purchase a meal plan from YDS, health risks associated with the lack of vegetarian or vegan options in the dining halls could be a potential problem for those students choosing not to eat meat, who would have to pay additional money to eat elsewhere. These students, according to Corson-Knowles, often move off-campus their junior and senior years simply because they do not want to be forced to purchase a meal plan which does not meet their needs.

According to Dougherty, YDS at least partly addresseses this issue by offering a $500 stipend to Edge of the Woods, a health food store on Whalley Avenue, to those students with "dietary or medical problems...documented by UHS." This can apply to some students who have vegetarian or vegan diets; currently two of these students receive the stipend.

Another major problem that the YCVS has noticed, though, is that "all the hot foods that they label as vegan haven't actually been checked for animal/milk/egg derivatives," according to YCVS member Bonnie Gulas, TC '02. Often, food processing companies can "preserve food longer or give it a particular consistency or coloring very cheaply by using a variety of unexpected and often animal-derived ingredients in their products," Freifeld explained.

YDS does admit that this is a potential problem, which means that often the only foods that are guaranteed to be free from all animal derivatives are rice, pasta, couscous and fresh vegetables. According to Corson-Knowles, "It's absurd that [this diet] would not constitute a medical hazard of malnutrition, if not at least weight loss and other problems."

YDS continues to maintain that it is doing everything in its power to deal with this problem. "We have purchased the book Animal Ingredients A to Z," Davidson said. "But even they admit to not always being able to get definitive answers from manufacturers."

Davidson urges vegetarians and vegans to be patient. "We live in an imperfect world where it is difficult to be pure," he said. "YDS is doing the best it can in an environment with 4,500 individuals making requests."

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