rant about nutrition info availability

sweetteadrinker2

My school has quite the decent cafeteria, sushi, sandwich station, pizza, and some less standard stuff like traditional chinese food and Indian foods.

One giant problem: nutrition info isn't available on about 95% of it. What little is available is for things like fresh fruit, which you can't accurately measure by the fruit anyway.

So I talked to the director of food service today, explaining that I needed to know the calories, carbs, fiber, and fat at minimum on all foods to make choices on what to eat. He looked at me like I was fluffy the three headed dog.

What is so hard to grasp about the fact that people want to know what they're eating? I can't just eat without knowing the counts because I LC to manage a medical condition. I've resorted to eating canned tuna and mayo for lunch and dinner some days. It seems like such a normal thing to have available to me. But I'd really like to be able to get a hot meal now and then. Blah. I'm so fed up with the world of people who don't count anything and see no reason too.

Rant over.

KnitOrMiss

I think it may be more about how much effort it takes them. Could you maybe offer to create an entry for the recipes that would give you the data if they provided the recipes? Could you befriend a lunch-person who would be able to help with the data? Much info is done through scientific testing, a lot is done through recipe building and all that... I think befriending the staff is a much better idea, since you got no joy with the boss. I'd explain to him that it is a medical requirement for you, and that you'd be happy to provide a doctor note, and/or print out information explaining why this is important, eh. But, if you befriend those prepping the food, they might be able to give you the inside scoop.

And if you're willing to do some legwork to work at getting this set up (you might do some light research at other colleges), it could be a marketing tool for the university going forward. You might revolutionize the college world!

Dragonwolf

Additionally, if you befriend the food prep workers, they may be able to tweak one or more of the dishes to be closer to your needs.

Until you get the "official" information, you can probably gauge fairly close to what's in a given food item to have an idea of the numbers, especially since most of the stuff you used as examples are pretty straightforward and standard.

Sushi, for example, is going to pretty much be about 5g seaweed, 1-2 tablespoons rice, and about a tablespoon of whatever filling, which is usually a protein and/or fat (cream cheese, salmon, avocado, tuna, etc) per roll slice. The traditional Chinese and Indian food is typically pretty easy to figure out, too -- often rice, vegetables, and some meat -- the hard part will be sauces, but that can be mitigated if the sauce is available on the side.

The sandwich station is probably your best friend barring knowing all the ingredients of everything, as it's likely going to be things you could otherwise pick up in the store -- deli meat, nut butter, mayo, etc. You can pretty easily look that up and get close information. It may also be an easier thing to ask what brand of deli meat or whatever they use for the sandwich station.

Also, odds are good that they get most of their general supplies from Gordon Food Service (one of the largest restaurant suppliers in the country), so you can probably find a retail store and find the exact things or ingredients and get the nutrition information off of them. The sushi is a bit more sketchy on that and might be obtained from a more specialty place, but GFS supplies a lot of things like meat, buns, condiments, and the other more typical stuff and raw ingredients.