Today I sat in Dana and slowly swallowed my sad food. Look, we all complain about the food here. It’s a sacred SLU pastime. But I’m not here to blame my bout with the stomach flu on Dana against the word of an ER doctor. But can someone PLEASE spend some money that we don’t have on our food options?
I have been a vegan for nearly five years. And while SLU touts itself as a place with great food options, I struggle every single day to find suitable food to eat. At the pub, I have a choice of fried and carb-heavy foods. Dana will usually have at least one vegan option per meal, if that. Sure, the salad bar is always an option at Dana, but a normal human cannot subside on salads seven days a week (and honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of salads).
The only thing that’s reliable and available to me all the time is processed, packaged junk food, which is very unappetizing after four years. It’s to the point where I would rather skip lunch than eat another bagel with hummus and broccoli. I can’t imagine what it’s like for those who abstain from gluten or follow other diets.
“But Roni,” you may say, “veganism is your choice! You can’t complain if you’re choosing to eat this way!” Sure, maybe that’s a valid opinion. However, I also have a life-threatening nut allergy. Every time I eat at any establishment here, I am risking my life. Everywhere I go on campus, I carry an epi-pen in case I accidentally consume tree nuts.
While I carry this risk of coming into contact with tree nuts any time I go out to eat, I don’t think that I should be put at risk at a school where I pay $68,980, especially when the school will not cover my ambulance bill when I go into anaphylactic shock on its watch. Some colleges have whole separate kitchens to prepare foods away from certain allergens, and have strict rules in place to prevent cross-contamination.
Dana offers small signs that note each allergen that might be in the food. However, if these signs are even up (often times they are nowhere to be found), they are either contradictory, or for the wrong food.
The risk of cross contamination is also extreme. For example, tonight while adding tofu to my sad Dana salad, I noticed there was a container of pesto right next to it. For those who don’t know, pesto contains pine nuts, which even the smallest amount of can kill me in under 20 minutes. The amount of times I have seen ingredients fall into other containers of food at the Dana salad or hot bar is too many to count.
While this is mostly just a problem for my vegan diet, I had to completely reassess my salad for fear of the traces of pesto in the tofu mess with my necessary nut-free diet. There were no signs or barriers warning anyone of the potential tree nuts or cross contamination either. This needs to change.I understand that the school is not swimming in money right now, but focusing on allergy and dietary restriction dining is an important issue regardless of funds.
Not only is it extremely frustrating to carefully pick and choose what is vegan and what is not, it is also extremely scary knowing that a lack of label or wrongly placed spoon could cause me a large amount of pain, hefty medical bills and possibly death.
Since taking the dining survey for the past four years has yielded no results, I write this article: this issue needs to be addressed now, not just to respect some people’s choice of lifestyle, but before someone has a fatal food encounter.