Ready in a line that crosses the whole lot of Krach Garden for a meal in Wiley Eating Court docket will be tough for any particular person. Solely accessing one kind of meal in a large eating corridor makes that a lot tougher.
Regardless of Purdue having a fairly numerous inhabitants of scholars from everywhere in the world, eating corridor choices are likely to solely broadly serve college students with out dietary restrictions.
Whereas Purdue does provide some separate choices for college kids which might be vegetarian, vegan or allergenic, they’re severely restricted. College students who fall below this class should get artistic to discover a meal within the eating courts.
Windsor Eating Court docket is presently the one eating corridor on campus with a number of vegetarian and vegan pleasant dishes. Pranav Tallapaka, a freshman in synthetic intelligence, mentioned this severely limits his decisions.
“The shortage of something obtainable forces me to go to Windsor,” Tallapaka mentioned. Different eating halls both don’t have something vegetarian for me or they aren’t constant in any way.”
Anita Dinakar, a freshman in first-year engineering, additionally frequents Windsor as a vegetarian.
“There’s all the time one thing I can eat at a eating corridor, but it surely’s actually solely Windsor that I can actually select what I need to eat and never simply the one factor that they’ve someplace else,” Dinakar mentioned.
Pooja Manohar, a freshman in enterprise analytics and data administration, mentioned they acknowledge that vegetarian choices could also be obtainable, however they aren’t typically that wholesome.
“The vegetarian choices are simply typically actually unhealthy and even when it’s hummus and pita, the pita is deep-fried to start with,” Manohar mentioned.
Many vegetarian college students have began to resort to different choices within the eating halls.
Manohar mentioned they take a traditional dish and craft it to suit their wants. “I’ll go to the Mexican meals part and make a quesadilla with rice, black beans, fajita greens and cheese,” they mentioned.
“I’m usually restricted to getting a salad on the salad bar or a tofu dish more often than not. Typically I’m going for the fries,” Tallapaka mentioned.
As a result of college students with dietary restrictions are used to not having a couple of or two choices once they go to get dinner, it may be additional disappointing when the choice they’ve doesn’t style nice.
“The vegan BBQ factor at Wiley was inedible. I’m not a choosy eater however I couldn’t even eat it,” Tallapaka mentioned.
Talaya Thomas, a freshman in meals science, mentioned she additionally struggles to search out one thing that works for her as a vegan.
“I am unable to bear in mind what meals it was—one thing like a bean dish. They only mixed essentially the most random choices with essentially the most random sauces and it was simply nasty,” Thomas mentioned.
On high of struggling to search out meals that varies week to week, college students with restrictions additionally typically undergo with the perils of getting to test over all of the elements they eat.
“I do know they’ve the Halal part and East Asian meals picks too. Halal does not all the time imply that it’s vegetarian although, proper?” Manohar mentioned. “They’re not the identical factor.”
Amber Hitchins, a freshman within the Faculty of Science, mentioned cross-contamination is an enormous situation for her as a result of she has an egg allergy.
“There’s all the time a threat that somebody can cross-contaminate meals very simply,” she mentioned.
Hitchins mentioned she makes use of the eating corridor app to preview the sorts of choices they’ve beforehand, however the app doesn’t replace substitutions in actual time.
“I bear in mind, one particular time they modified out the meat for steak in Windsor as an alternative of the bottom beef that I might normally get,” Hitchins mentioned. This is a matter as a result of she has to test the elements beforehand to keep away from the chance of cross-contamination.
To keep away from the eating corridor difficulties, some college students resort to off-campus choices solely.
“A few associates and I usually should go to Style of India or Darshan off campus since they’re the one good Indian eating places right here that truly serve vegetarian meals,” Manohar mentioned.
“There’s a big portion of scholars who fall below this umbrella that go right here—there may be demand,” they mentioned.
