Tufts may be known for serving decent food, by collegiate standards, in its dining halls and on-campus eateries. But for Rachel Geylin, a senior with severe food allergies, eating on the Hill was a challenge her freshman year.
"It was definitely worrisome," she said. "Not having the ingredients posted was like a guessing game half of the time. I stuck to more basic foods. If something looked like it had more in it, I wouldn't eat it."
It was for students like Geylin that Dewick-MacPhie and Carmichael dining halls began posting nutrition facts and ingredients last year on small index cards that accompany every dish. The change, which became possible when Tufts University Dining Services (TUDS) incorporated a new computer program that can sort and store nutritional information, came as a result of student input from the yearly TUDS student survey.
"Over the years, we asked nutrition questions [on the survey]," TUDS Nutrion Marketing Specialist Julie Lampie said. "We knew that students were clamoring for this type of information."
After a year and a half with the new system, students report using the cards for a variety of purposes, from avoiding allergies to keeping an eye on calories and fat intake.
Sophomore Alex Ornik says he looks at the cards to find out what is in the dish. If the food is particularly unhealthy, he said he looks at the nutrition facts to see "how badly I'm hurting my arteries."
Other students focus on specific pieces of information listed on the cards. Senior Lindsay Hinman says she often feels rushed through the line, but still checks the cards for basic information.
"I usually just look at the calories since you don't want to stand there and read every single thing," she said.
Freshman Joke Alesh, who avoids eating pork, said she uses the cards to double-check ingredients, but isn't concerned with calories or fat content.
"I don't look at the nutrition facts," Alesh said.
Geylin was abroad last year when the signs were originally introduced and discovered them during her week as a freshman orientation leader this year.
"I walk in and there were all of these little green signs everywhere. [I thought] 'What are these things? Where did they come from?'" she said. "They were really quite helpful."
The cards made her realize there are more dishes that she can eat without upsetting her allergies than she had originally thought.
The TUDS survey taken by students last November indicated that 66.4 percent of students refer to the posted signs, while 12.8 percent reported not using them, and 20.8 percent reported not knowing the postings were available. Lampie said fewer students would likely be in the last category if the survey were taken today, since at the time the cards had been on display for less than two months.
While most students say they're looking at the nutrition facts, they are split as to whether they can correctly interpret them. What does a 5.7-gram fat content in the vegetarian corn chowder mean? Is 2.7 grams of fiber in the seasoned fajita fries a lot?
"There might be one or two things I don't know," Ornik said. He cited the cards' abbreviations, such as "HM" - which designates a "healthy meal" with fat and calorie contents below a certain level - as examples of information that is harder to interpret without specific knowledge of how the cards work.
Alesh said that the amounts listed on the cards are virtually meaningless to her. While standard nutrition labels on packaged food items list the nutrition facts by percentage of daily values, similar information is not provided on dining services labels.
"I don't know how much I'm supposed to have, so I wouldn't know if this is good for me or bad for me," she said.
For senior Jillian Russo the serving size designations are the most difficult piece of information to interpret.
"It'll say four ounces and I'm horrible at gauging," she said. "Is that two bites or the entire thing they're serving?"
TUDS has been working with Foodtalk, a student group that looks to act as a liaison between Tufts Dining Services and the student body, to come up with creative ways of relaying this information to students. Lampie said she is working to help students understand the serving sizes listed on the cards, for example, by trying to create visual elements that students can more easily interpret.
"Basically what I will have to do is take a scale and weigh out what four ounces is and then try to replicate that," Lampie said.
Lampie also said developing and maintaining the food labels requires a lot of effort in their current state. Creating the cards requires that nutritional information of every food item be entered into a computer system.
"Manufacturers change their products frequently," she said. "Distributors carry different products, so it's a major job trying to stay on top of it."
