The university needs to provide additional gluten-free options on campus
By Allison Sattler
While KU may seem to have a variety of gluten-free options on campus for students with dietary restrictions, as a student who cannot tolerate gluten, they do not. During my freshman year as a student living on-campus, I lost eight pounds due to lack of options on campus and even had to buy a mini fridge so I could stock up on my own food from home.
KU needs to provide additional gluten-free options on campus.
As of right now, there are only a few places on campus that provide gluten-free options. There is True Balance, which is a section in the South Dining Hall, the sensitive section at Cub Cafe, a few items on the menu at Chick-fil-A in the Academic Forum, and small snacks at the Starbucks in the MSU and the Book and Brew in the Rohrbach Library. If you are willing to pay money, there are gluten-free options at the Kutztown Tavern and the Bagel Bar located on Main Street.
The administration and the dietary specialists on campus might disagree with my opinion, saying that there are enough options for students on campus, and on paper, that is true. When I was given the tour of my gluten-free options, it looked like a great bargain, and I was even able to talk to a nutritionist about my diet. However, the reality of the situation is much different than the blueprint of what it’s supposed to be.
The real question is, have these people ever had to live gluten-free? Have they ever had to worry about getting sick, and running to their dorm across campus? Or have they had to go hungry throughout the day and find nothing but a bag of chips to hold them over? It is hard to go gluten-free for the normal, healthy person, but for someone with Celiac Disease, it is a must. According to the Mayo Clinic, “when the body’s immune system overreacts to gluten in food, the reaction damages the tiny, hairlike projections, called villi, that line the small intestine. Villi absorb vitamins, minerals and other nutrients from the food you eat. If your villi are damaged, you can’t get enough nutrients, no matter how much you eat.”
KU administration says on the dietary website that, “although we take great lengths to accommodate students with food allergies, we prepare food in open kitchens where cross contact with foods containing allergens may occur.” This makes it more difficult to trust the food we put in our mouths. While most restaurants and food service industries give the same type of warning, it should be different on-campus, especially when students are giving their money and trust to the college to keep them fed and safe from contamination.
I chose KU for a variety of reasons, but one was that they boasted about the gluten-free options that would be available to me. South Dining Hall was the main place that I ate dinners because they had a consistent meal that was free of gluten. However, these meals were often repeated a few times a week and were lack-luster. Adding to this, the upstairs where the meal stations are closes at 8:00 p.m., and there was nothing in the downstairs stations that was gluten-free. It was difficult to witness friends being able to eat whatever they desired, while I was hungry.
Cub Cafe is a different matter. While Cub serves gluten-free options in the sensitive section, more often than not, there is nothing in the sensitive section. About three or four times I have walked into the Cub Cafe and found nothing. When asked about gluten-free options, most of the time workers would tell me there was nothing that day or at that time, which was frustrating when there was no advertised time limit for certain sections. I have wasted flex dollars entering the cafe and found nothing for me to eat. Starbucks and Book and Brew have smaller snacks that are gluten-free, which sometimes are not even there, but nothing substantial.
Solutions to the problem at hand would be expensive and hard to do on campus. Having more gluten-free options available would mean ordering and buying more gluten-free food, having a completely gluten-free section and more options at smaller establishments like Starbucks and Book and Brew. While Kutztown may not be able to give away that kind of money, they can start small. Completely labeling food items at South Dining Hall and Cub Cafe, having a concrete schedule for the sensitive section at Cub Cafe, and having the staff be more informed about the issues that gluten-free students face would be a good start to change.