The day is Tuesday. I enter Mabee Commons at around 11:41 PM, and walk past the True Balance “allergen-free” section (though how allergen-free it is, is highly questionable) and the Global Kitchen section (how “global” it appears is also a debated matter) to a small, meek section with a window with a green strip bearing the word: Vegan. There’s a little plant symbol next to the word as well. Before I look upon the trays they choose to serve that day, I close my eyes and—in an act of brief withholding of my skepticism towards traditional montheism—pray that the vegan meal options for the day will be good and substantial, that maybe Mabee Commons, and SU as a whole, does care about vegan students after all.

The meal option that day was white rice and beans. I guess God really is dead. 

Okay, okay, I’m joking. With that sarcastic and overly theological preamble aside, I can already hear the thoughts going through certain people’s heads. For one, some might be thinking: “Isn’t criticizing Comms beating a dead horse?” Well, yes. But if the horse claims to be inclusive of people with a certain diet, but in reality is not, then the horse has merited its continuous beating. Additionally, some may be thinking: “I mean come on, there wasn’t always a vegan section here and now there is! It’s much better now! Plus, y’all have a salad bar, fruit bar, and the various cooked veggies spread out among the different sections of Comms. What more do you want?”

Well, hypothetical objector, that’s a bit of a loaded question. So allow me to take some time to unload it all.

Let’s start backwards. Suppose you are a vegetarian student at SU. You are not against consuming all animal products, but you do heed to the concerns of animal rights’ activists to an extent, and wish to avoid eating meat. Maybe you are simply allergic. What meal options does Mabee Commons give you? While Comms does have a salad bar, fruit bar, and cooked veggies among the different sections, those are not full meals; those are sides and/or appetizers. One can, of course, construct hearty salads, but usually not grain bowls (there is a lack of whole grains in Comms in general), and besides, plant-based folk have large palettes too. We would love to have tasty, more substantial meals that also meet our dietary needs. So, I ask again, if you are vegetarian, what meals does Comms give to you?

Well…there’s pizza.

If you’re vegetarian, you are mainly offered cheese pizzas, pasta (when it doesn’t have meat in it), grilled cheese sandwiches, black bean burgers, eggs, soups (these are usually not “meals”), and Comms’ vegan “meals” (I will discuss these later) as your entreé options. In terms of eating consistently well, it is not a lot to work with (granted, even for non-vegetarians, eating well at Comms can be difficult, but that is another discussion). The best things there are eggs for breakfast, but college dining hall eggs are not known for being good, and SU does little to nothing to save their reputation. Every time I eat them, it does not feel like I am eating actual eggs, but rather yellow, rubbery chunks of an alien substance.

Now, let’s suppose you are a vegan student at SU, meaning you are against eating any products which come from animals, including eggs, cheese, milk, butter, honey, etc. Given the paucity of options for vegetarian students, you would expect the vegan provisions to be worse. And what do you know: you’re right! It is incredibly difficult to eat foods in Comms which do not use animal products in their ingredients. A lot of Comms’ vegetable sides often include milk and/or honey in some capacity (for example, their roasted potatoes and glazed carrots), the salad dressings are mostly non-vegan, save for the few vinaigrette dressings they have, and as mentioned earlier, it usually lacks whole grains. The only whole grains present are quinoa and occasionally brown rice. Not to mention that the veggie sides which are vegan-friendly, are often dipped in excessive amounts of canola and soybean oil, which makes them considerably less healthy.

But what about the vegan meal section at Comms? Well, I have been eating at Comms for nearly two months now, and the number of good, healthy meals I have had from the vegan section can be counted on one hand. To begin, there is little variety in the vegan section. As freshman and vegan student Ileana Walk commented, “It’s typically the same thing of tofu and potatoes, which for a couple of days is great, but it just gets to a point where you can’t eat the same thing every day.”  While all the meal sections repeat themselves to some extent, the vegan section does it a lot more than others. And when it’s not just serving tofu and potatoes for the billionth time, the vegan section is usually just a repository of unhealthy meat-substitute foods and otherwise undercooked/underbaked food.

For example, Comms’ plant-based fried chicken options are arguably worse for you than regular fried chicken. One serving of Comms’ plant-based chicken nuggets contains 2,230 mg of sodium, which almost meets the daily sodium intake limit by itself, 2,300 mg (and keep in mind that that is just a recommended limit; you can get by fine with much less). Compare this to the amount in a serving of regular chicken nuggets, which is just 520 mg. Plant-based chicken nuggets usually have more sodium than regular nuggets, but usually not by this much. And it’s not just the plant-based chicken options which are dangerously high in sodium. Whenever they prepare crispy tofu, you can guarantee the sodium count will encroach upon the maximum daily intake. It’s almost like they want to give vegans kidney disease. 

Additionally, one can usually expect…underwhelmingly prepared food. I’ve had tofu bao where the bao was crunchy, not soft and fluffy like it’s supposed to be. There was a time when they just roasted some cauliflower, threw buffalo wing sauce on it, and called it a “meal.” I’ve also eaten fried vegetables which later made me sick to my stomach, the last thing I thought vegetables would do to me. White rice, a non-whole grain, is prioritized over brown rice, a whole grain. 

My overall point here is that there just seems to be a profound air of laziness around the vegan section in Comms. Even the way it is presented appears lazy and unhelpful to those on plant-based diets. During the first few weeks of the semester, the vegan section was pushed to the far corner next to the pizza area, away from the major sections of Comms. The menu options presented in the SU app often contradict what is actually being served (granted, this happens with other sections in Comms as well), and there have even been times when vegan meals were not ready at the same time other sections were and I had to wait… just to see they were serving plant-based nuggets again. Moreover, while they have been trying to make it clearer what’s vegan and what’s not, it’s still hard to tell sometimes. Ileana remarked, “I found myself having to ask my friends if there was meat in the pasta or in the pasta sauce, which, if you’re vegetarian, that’s also an issue. You can’t really tell, especially [in] a marinara sauce.”

As someone who has recently tried to shift their diet in a more plant-based direction, mainly because of a class I am taking at SU, it’s incredibly frustrating to see the void of effort here. It’s upsetting to see Aramark claim their inclusiveness of plant-based dieters only to ultimately give very little to support them. Even if you are trying to get off your meal plan or otherwise alter it, the process is unnecessarily cumbersome and they still won’t let you. As Ileana recounts, “I have gone through the motions of trying to cancel my meal plan, or at least lower it, to no avail, which is incredibly frustrating… My first point of contact was my advisor, and he suggested that I talk to Residence Life, so I emailed a contact at Residence Life who referred me to Aramark’s general manager, who sent me to Aramark’s chef, who sent me back to the manager… I defaulted again to my Residence Life contact, which prompted a meeting between me, the manager, and the chef, during which my concern was not resolved.”

At this point, it becomes pertinent to ask: why? For me, it seems to be about the desire for efficiency at the expense of nutrition or accommodating a fairly widespread personal lifestyle. It is much more cost-effective to fry some mushrooms and serve it as a meal, or toss some buffalo wing sauce on roasted cauliflower and call that a meal, rather than cook something more substantial and nutritional. While the drive for efficiency affects all Comms’ eaters, for plant-based folk, it hurts the most, as their eating style is often in resistance to carnivorous capitalism.

Speaking of carnivorous capitalism: Aramark. If you are a plant-based dieter who wishes to see a more substantial change in how SU serves food in the dining hall, gathering with allies and challenging SU’s partnership with Aramark is a great place to begin. They play a huge part in why Comms lacks plant-based options, or healthy options in general (there are other controversies about them, which would distract from my main point but you can read about here, here, and here).

If you are looking to see smaller, but still significant changes, then simply demand more variety and better information communication. When asked what minimal changes she would like to see, Ileana responded, “A sign: this is vegan. This doesn’t have dairy in it. You can have this. I don’t know what’s safe and what isn’t. It would be nice to see something other than tofu in the vegan section… or just a more diverse palette of options in general for everybody.” 

Wherever your ambitions lie, my advice is simple: say something. Demand a change. Otherwise, Aramark will continue to put “plant forward” symbols next to their menu options, even though there is virtually nothing plant forward about them, no Mabee about it.