By Caitlin Mahoney
The two years I have been at Stevens, Pierce Dining Hall has proudly shown off its A+ vegan report card awarded to them by PETA. It was not until this year, though, that I decided to try going vegan, and with that, comes eating vegan in Pierce. While I recognize that it could be significantly worse, I would definitely not go as far as to grant an A+ for their accommodation of vegans. The two main faults my vegan friends and I have identified are the clearly limited options and the insufficient labeling of foods as being vegan or not.
Before getting into the limited options, I would like to say that I am grateful there are any options at all besides salad, since I have visited schools where that is essentially the only dairy and meat-free option. That said, the options are still quite limited here, and definitely not what I would call top-notch, as their award implies. Besides the salad bar, there is the ancient grains station. This is nice, but it is only open during weekday mealtimes and usually is just fried tofu, a couple of kinds of rice, and some vegetables that get rotated throughout the week. Between meals and on weekends, the station is closed, and we are left with either the salad bar or the vegetables and fries in the main entrée area (unless those vegetables are “parmesan roasted”). Moving onto breakfast, there is even less available. Pierce 2 has vegan yogurt available in the fridge but, besides that, the only clearly vegan option is usually the fruit. In my opinion, the acai bowls and smoothies added to Pierce for weekday breakfasts this year would have been the perfect opportunity to add something vegan to the menu, yet, unfortunately, they almost always have some sort of dairy added to them.
The lack of labeling in Pierce makes the choices of what to eat even more limited. Last year, the bagels and bread were in their bags by the toaster, making it easy for people to read the ingredient lists themselves. Now, they are in unlabeled containers with no information about what is in them on display. Other foods that often go unlabeled are the pasta station, all of the desserts, and food available from the grill. Not only is the issue the lack of labels, but the food can be labeled improperly, too. I check the Pierce menu online before going in person to see if there will be any options besides ancient grains and salad, and I have consistently found foods listed as vegan online that, when I double-check the ingredients in person, are not, such as the hush puppies. It’s like I am being catfished into going to Pierce. However, there are worse, more serious instances when the food is labeled incorrectly in person. A friend of mine who has been vegan for quite a while ate rice and beans in Pierce which were labeled as vegan, and she ended up getting sick from it because it actually contained chicken stock. The labeling issue can easily become something more than just an inconvenience.
Overall, it does not take much looking into the situation to see that it is quite a stretch to give Pierce an A+ for vegan food, seeing that there are not diverse options and entire sections of food go unlabeled (while the ones that are labeled are not always correct). This year, I am not living entirely off a meal plan, but I cannot imagine being vegan during my freshman year with an unlimited meal plan, eating ancient grains and salad at almost every meal. Though I focused on Pierce here and their grade from PETA, I find the meal exchange locations to be even worse with labeling, but especially regarding choices. I consider Pierce generally to be the best option for vegan food on campus, yet I would still not even consider giving them an A+ with how things currently stand.
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