And so it begins: the controversial and rumor-plagued meal plan proposal of last Spring is the new dining reality for a skeptical mob of upperclassmen and a guinea pig class of freshmen locked into the largest plan. Only a week into Fall term, I admit that there is much to admire about the shiny new dining system. However, the tremendous value promised during the highly publicized rollout of the SmartChoice meal plan and the new Class of 1953 Commons has not been fully delivered. Dartmouth Dining Services has failed to make a nutritional value a focal point of the new dining system.
As I walked into Collis last week, my brain's mental math gears were turning furiously. I crunched the numbers as I circled around the salad bar: meal exchange value and meals of the day, swipes versus DBA I quickly gave up and settled on the meal of the day, but was immediately unsettled after reading the DDS selections for that evening's fixed meal. The meal of the day, Collis' simplest option, was pasta, a cookie, and either a 22-ounce soda or eight-ounces of milk or orange juice. This meal distinctly contradicted the new healthy choice mantra of DDS, because while there were drink choices, the choices were not equally healthy.
The soft drink in the meal was clearly the more appealing choice for me, and would be for many others. For perspective, eight ounces of milk or juice is barely enough to fill my on-the-go cereal every morning. Even the lightest eaters among us would find that to be an unsuitable drink to accompany a full meal. Of course, I could have scrapped both options for a glass of water and refilled it to my heart's content, but then I would have wasted the drink component of my meal.
Thus, the larger, and not coincidentally, unhealthier drink was simply the better deal. With a more expensive meal plan and a lagging economy, many Dartmouth students wish to get the most bang for their buck at our dining facilities. Students desiring to eat a healthy meal are economically punished by choosing the healthier drink in the DDS-endorsed meal of the day. If health-conscious students at Collis want a larger orange juice on a regular basis, they must exceed their meal value and risk a negative account balance very early.
Even though my Collis healthy choice was a deceptive "choice," at least I could hold my nose and pay for what I wanted. At '53 Commons, I had one avenue to attain my morning orange juice: a Minute Maid orange "blend" from a soda fountain dispenser. I'm not demanding organic orange juice from an Upper Valley farm, which I'm sure doesn't even exist, but I would like straight orange juice without an asterisk next to its name.
I understand that this is the real world, where 22 ounces of Coca-Cola are sold for the same price as eight ounces of Garelick Farms milk, but College administrators stridently resisted student perception that the new dining hall and dining plan were created with only economics and cost cutting in mind. If the College wants to encourage healthy eating, it should bite the proverbial economic bullet and let us choose the healthy option without feeling like we're getting penalized for it.
To be clear, DDS is not universally serving the unhealthiest and cheapest food. It deserves praise for taking steps such as using eggs from cage-free farms and local dairy products. But we were told that the meal plan would be designed with flexibility in mind, a message that sounds hollow when I'm forced to compromise healthy eating habits in order to stay within the confines of SmartChoice.
The new system is especially hard to swallow when DDS encourages a healthy diet but won't make the full commitment to making said diet financially accessible, even in small ways like the drink choice for the Collis meal of the day. Commenting on the new dining plan, DDS director David Newlove said last year that "[w]e will never serve low quality food because that would be detrimental to everything that we strive to do ("Dining plan costs freshmen more," March 8). By making healthy choices the less obvious choice for students eating on campus, DDS has failed to make good on that promise.
