Transparency Item: The Perspectives section of the Graphic is comprised of articles based on opinion. This is the opinion and perspective of the writer.
With new and returning students on campus after the summer break, this means a departure from home-cooked meals for many students. Eating at the Waves Café, known as “the Caf,” is the main food option available to students, but for some students, this option is unreliable.
Similar to 33 million people in the United States, I was born with food allergies. A food allergy is when the body’s immune system has an overreaction to a food or ingredient that you eat, according to Food Allergy Research & Education.
Approximately 1 in 13 children and about 1 in 10 adults in the United States have food allergies. Pepperdine has an average of 19 undergraduate students in a classroom, according to Pepperdine’s website. So, mathematically, this means that each class has at least one or two students with a food allergy.
Pepperdine’s Caf has the Minus 9 station for students with special dietary needs. This is not enough for students, and Pepperdine needs to work on being more inclusive for students with dietary restrictions.
When looking for food in the Caf, students can find television screens with menus for each meal station. These menus depict the name of the station, the names of dishes, the prices and a general description of what’s in the dish, such as sides.
A television screen depicts the Minus 9 food station menu in the Waves Café on Sep. 3. Students reference screens like these for meal options and descriptions. Photo by Noah Burton
Bon Appétit Management Company, the company responsible for the food available at Pepperdine, calls this “descriptive menu naming.” Pepperdine writes that descriptive menu naming makes it so “students and guests of our cafes can easily identify foods that contain their allergen or dietary restriction,” according to Pepperdine’s Dining website.
Descriptive menu naming is surely helpful for many students, but it might overlook certain students. While this technique makes it slightly easier to identify foods, it does not specifically require naming the food allergens present in a meal, such as “eggs” or “milk.”
Students who are unfamiliar with words used in the descriptions or who do not speak English as their first language may have difficulty recognizing that allergens or certain ingredients are present.
Bon Appétit did acknowledge this when they wrote, “this [descriptive menu naming] does not capture all information regarding the sub-ingredients in purchased products such as bread,” according to Bon Appétit’s pamphlet. For example, the company gives an example of a menu item with the word “havarti” in the description, only indicating that there is milk in the dish if you are familiar with the name of this cheese.
Without allergens or ingredients being explicitly identified, people with dietary restrictions are at risk of accidentally eating food with allergens in it. I suggest implementing another strategy to help students.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) utilizes allergen symbols on the menus for its dining services. These are simple, clear symbols placed next to each menu item indicating what the allergen is, according to the UCLA website.
The allergen symbol system is easy to implement, considering Pepperdine’s Caf already has menu icons indicating categories like “vegetarian” or “locally crafted.” Allergen symbols would give a more convenient and more foolproof point of reference for those with dietary restrictions.
Pepperdine also has the Minus 9 food station, which “features entrées that celebrate fresh, simple, whole ingredients while avoiding all of the top-9 allergens + gluten,” according to Pepperdine’s Dining website.
The “Big 9” food allergens are milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans and sesame, but food allergies are not limited to the “Big 9,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
While Minus 9 is beneficial for students, it has comparatively few options. Other service stations in the Caf include Show + Tell, Warm + Soulful and Global, each of which provides two meal options.
Students with dietary restrictions then have only a guarantee of two options for each meal compared to eight for other students. In some cases, this is effectively one option because it may be two versions of the same meal to accommodate vegan or vegetarian options.
This lack of meal variety for students disincentivizes eating at the Caf and might even feel exclusionary for students with dietary restrictions. Making your own food is not an option for all students, especially since first-year students do not have access to a kitchen.
I understand that working around dietary restrictions can be difficult, so I wanted to learn more about how it works at Pepperdine. I reached out to Pepperdine’s Bon Appétit manager, Darren Wise, via email once on Aug. 20 for an interview about options for students with dietary restrictions and the limitations the company faces, but he could not be reached.
Increasing food accommodations for students with dietary restrictions will require more of a monetary investment from Pepperdine or Bon Appétit. It involves more training, additional options, adaptability in recipes, increased safety practices and more resources spent on communication with those with dietary restrictions, as illustrated by the Allergy & Asthma Network.
Despite the costs, creating a more inclusive and accommodating dining experience for all students would be worth the costs. Creating allergen symbol indicators and increasing the allergen-free meal options at the Caf would work towards giving students with dietary restrictions more variety and confidence in their dietary choices.
___________________
Follow the Graphic on X: @PeppGraphic
Contact Noah Burton via email: noah.burton@pepperdine.edu
