By Maya Rosenberg
This semester, University of Maryland Dining Services will be partnering with Menus of Change, an organization that promotes better food choices and menu development, and an increased focus on health sustainability.
According to the UMD Dining Services website, as a member of Menus of Change, dining services aims to “advance healthier, more sustainable life-long food choices among students” through the changes they plan on implementing. Some of these goals include “buying fresh seasonal and local [produce]” and “incorporating sustainable practices into daily operating procedures.”
“Joining Menus of Change is an exciting way to influence the way colleges see food,” University of Maryland Dining Services spokesperson Bart Hipple said.
UMD will join over 50 universities as a member of the Menus of Change collaborative. Specifically, UMD Dining Services is now a part of the Menus of Change Research Collaborative, which was co-founded by Stanford researchers and the Culinary Institute of America.
According to an Oct. 10 UMD Dining Services press release about the new partnership, the University Research Collective is formed from a “working group of leading scholars, foodservice business leaders and executive chefs from 35+ colleges and universities who are accelerating efforts to move Americans toward healthier, more sustainable plant-forward diets.”
Joining Menus of Change is just one of multiple initiatives that Dining Services has put into effect in recent years. In Fall 2016, they instituted the Anytime Dining plan, which replaced the limited swipe system. Dining Services also offers monthly specials, or “Terrapin Favorites,” which provide culturally diverse meals for students.
But with all of the change that Dining Services is bringing about, some students are concerned that they won’t see concrete results. Though the Menus of Change partnership is advertised in flyers on the tables of the dining halls, many students remain unaware of the recent collaboration. Regardless, students hope to see a change in their culinary options.
“I wish there was more diversity in the food,” sophomore aerospace engineering major Neil Agrawal said. “I don’t want grilled chicken everyday.”
According to Agrawal, basically every meal he’s had at the diner has been “carbs” and “fat” with “zero creativity.”
For student like Agrawal, the absence of creative and healthy option has been the most frustrating about their dining hall experience. Still, not everyone feels that way.
“I think you just have to look for [healthy options],” sophomore economics major Ritu Konanur said. “I think there are campuses with worse [dining halls].”
Other issues that students have had at the dining hall are transparency and consistency.
According to freshman business major Hannah Wandersman, who keeps kosher style and does not eat pork or shrimp, the lack of ingredients in dishes can be challenging when choosing a meal.
Partnering with Menus of Change would hypothetically help alleviate the problem of ingredient transparency, as being open about the sourcing and preparation of food is a core value of the program.
The main reasoning behind the Dining Services partnership with Menus of Change is to directly fix the lack of creativity and create more healthy options for students, according to Hipple. A main tenant of the Menus of Change agenda is to “lead menu messaging around flavor,” and to introduce healthy meal options that students can stick with even after their time in college.
“[Joining Menus of Change] allows Dining Services to plan menus in a more thoughtful way than just nutrition,” Hipple said. “It is a collaboration between food and academia.”
But for students, new programs and menu changes are all about the concrete changes that they not only see, but can taste.
“[Menus of Change] could be cool and could work, but the dining hall program has a problem being really inconsistent,” Agrawal said. “They’ll have one thing on the menu, but then it will be something totally different.”