Frank Dining Hall is offering a broader range of healthy food options this year.
has charged full speed into the school year with a new dining program that promises healthier and more innovative food options.
The changes this year complete the second and final phase of a renovation of the university’s main dining hall. This year’s efforts focused primarily on providing new and healthier menu options. Last year’s first phase involved improving the layout of food stations inside the dining hall.
New this year is the Mindful food program, which strives to inform students about healthy food choices by ensuring that all entrees are fewer than 600 calories and are prepared with no added salt.
As part of this program, dining services personnel have taken the extra step of adding photos of what entrees should look like to give students an idea of portion control.
“Yeah, the food is healthier, and I personally love how everything tastes,” says Amanda Mayfield ’14. “I just wish we had this last year; the freshman are lucky!”
Students can choose entrees from an array of countries at Magellan’s Station, while the Wild Mushroom station continues to offer vegan and vegetarian options that everyone has been enjoying since its debut last year. The Flying Star station offers classic comfort food and campus favorites.
According to Dan Fravil, resident dining manager, another welcome addition to the dining hall is a soda machine that offers 149 flavors that students can use to create their own beverage.
Fravil said the combinations are endless; a student can look up recipes for drinks like a pina colada or get creative and invent their own. The machine already has a lot of fans, he said, and an upcoming upgrade will involve an app that a student can use to store soda recipes on their smartphone that the machine can read and automatically follow.