Sodexo accommodates those with selective diets

Sodexo dining services provides students with a variety of meal options daily, even accommodating those with vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free diets.

“We provide them another avenue to eat,” Steven Derrick, Sodexo’s area general manager, said.

Students with special diets are not able to eat anything they want. Life can be a struggle if one has a strict diet or is allergic to soy, peanuts or gluten.

The GCSU dining hall accommodates these students by not only posting the menu online for students to see the nutritional information, but also an information card beside the food showing the ingredients and nutrition facts. This guide is helpful to those with allergies, vegetarian and vegan diets, but it is quite different for someone with a gluten-free diet.

“It is a problem when

they cannot get the right food,” George Tucker, Sodexo’s executive chef, said.

Celiac disease requires someone to have a gluten-free lifestyle, meaning that a person’s small intestines prevents them from eating wheat, barley, rye and oats. Most of these ingredients are found in many food items.

Different ingredients are needed to prepare the food so the executive chef orders special gluten-free flower, bread, pasta, crackers and even brownies for the five students he prepares gluten-free meals for. Tucker has the students’ schedules posted on his wall in his office. He knows when they are coming to the dining hall and has their meals prepared and ready.

“It is a lot easier to prepare the food if you know what products to use and you know what to do,” Tucker said.

Many students do not require specific eating habits or lifestyles, but Derrick said that many students are just worried about gaining the “Freshman 15 (pounds).” Sodexo offers a four-week cycle of menus providing a balanced meal on a day-to-day basis. Meals are designed around the “The Balanced Way” program to ensure that all students are receiving a well-balanced diet.

The plan suggests that meals be divided into 50 percent fruits and vegetables, 25 percent lean meats and 25 percent whole grains. The guidelines call for meals under 600 calories with less than 35 percent from fat and at least three grams of fiber.

“There is a wide variety of all the food groups,” Hannah Schumacher, a sophomore theater major, said.

Since sophomores, juniors and seniors are under no obligation to be on a meal plan, Schumacher decided to get a 25-block meal plan this year because she knows that there will always be healthy options available. There are many non-freshman students that continue to go back to Sodexo, knowing that a healthy, balanced meal will be ready to eat.

GCSU is not the only campus that promotes and accommodates students with certain diets, there are over 25 participating colleges and universities nationwide using “The Balanced Way” program.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 25 2009. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry