Freshman Hanh Nguyen eats at Freshii at the University of Mississippi, Thursday, Nov. 6, 2014.
One of the most important parts about on and off campus living for college students is food and being offered the most nutritious options. Here at Ole Miss, students are afforded the liberty of choosing between many different types of food, whether healthy or unhealthy.
Richard Bradley, the marketing manager of Aramark, the foodservice provider for Ole Miss, discussed many nutritious options available through Ole Miss dining. Among some of the most popular choices are Freshii, Rebel Market and Toss it Up. Also, he said that there are good healthy options available at Panda Express through the Wok Smart program and Qdoba, among others, if students are trying to be health conscious. Additionally, the grab-and-go healthy items available at Einstein’s and Pod Markets are some of the most nutritious and popular items on campus.
Nonetheless, Bradley also discussed a difficult aspect of providing healthy options to students on campus.
“A lot of the struggle is the discrepancy between what students say they want and what they actually eat,” Bradley said.
According to Bradley, there was a lot of demand for more healthy options, and Freshii came as a result of that demand.
However, “Freshii started off really strong (at the beginning of this school year) and has since tapered off in popularity,” Bradley said. “We will continue to bring those nutritious brands and options to the mix because it is important to us, and our goal as a company is to provide nutritious options to students.”
Bradley also added that the Healthy for Life program available on the dining services website provides all of the nutritional information for food on campus. Therefore, students can check to see if what they think is nutritious is actually good for them. Healthy for Life provides direction to students who might not exactly know what is really healthy.
Bradley stated college is an “interesting time for students who are used to their parents dictating what and how they eat. Healthy for Life helps them make decisions and is beneficial because college is an important time for students to learn how to make healthy decisions.”
Chip Burr, marketing manager for the retail division of Aramark, also shared Bradley’s sentiments of the struggle of providing healthy options to students.
“Our goal and what is difficult is striking the balance between healthy options and then satisfying what everyone actually wants,” Burr said.
Indeed, Burr added that Chick-fil-A is one of the highest grossing operations on campus. He said that although Chick-fil-A is not completely unhealthy, and there are some nutritious options, the popular items are the French fries and chicken nuggets, which are most certainly not healthy.
Molly Jones, a senior social studies education major, agreed that campus dining “can be nutritious if you decide to make it nutritious.” However, she added that she thinks most students would like to see more all around healthy options in the Union, which is centrally located and convenient for most students.
Furthermore, Jones said it would be easier to make healthy choices if “nutritional information was more visible actually while ordering the food.” She believes that most students do not know about Healthy for Life and that if it were more visible to students, it would allow them to make better, healthier decisions.
