Mordechai Treiger | Knowing what you eat

Believe it or not, Penn's dining halls serve a lot of healthy food.

But if Dining Services are serious about helping students eat healthily, it isn't enough to just serve nutritious food and hope students choose to eat it. They need to provide the accurate information students need - when they need it. Penn should post nutritional facts about the day's menu next to the serving areas.

Currently, students who are interested in learning about what's in their food can check out the nutritional kiosks stationed in each dining hall.

In theory, students can use the kiosks to check out what's on the menu and read nutritional information. In practice, they shouldn't even bother.

For instance, take the menu. According to the kiosk, Hillel recently served pepperoni pizza and grilled ham with American cheese for dinner.

"If that were to ever happen, Hillel dining would shut down for a week," said College junior and kosher supervisor Miki Friedmann. "There is not a chance that that would make it off the delivery truck."

Another menu item is "Strawberry Daknearly Mocktail-Res." God knows I love my Daknearly Mocktails, but unfortunately Hillel doesn't serve strawberries.

Even when posted foods are plausible menu items, they rarely correlate with what is actually served on any given day. But foods that Hillel actually serves do occasionally find their way onto the menu.

For instance, the dining hall serves vegetarian burgers almost every day. According to the kiosk, they contain 564 calories and over one and a half grams of salt. A cheerful disclaimer reads, "We hope this information will help you meet your nutritional goals."

For the sake of reference, according to the McDonalds' nutritional placemat, a Big Mac contains 'only' 540 calories. A 564-calorie burger is not helping you meet any nutritional goals.

Naturally, I assumed the number was a mistake, so I crosschecked it with the thick folder next to the kiosk. It told me that while a single burger might contain 66 grams of fat, 440 grams of saturated fat and five grams of cholesterol, at least it contained 1561 grams of protein. All for a measly six calories! A disclaimer at the bottom of the page explained that "all nutritional values are approximations."

Apparently.

Let's be clear. The issue isn't always the food: The package the vegetarian burgers came in read 130 calories and half a gram of salt. The issue is accuracy and accessibility.

While some foods are obviously healthy, people are often surprised when they discover how many calories familiar and seemingly benign foods contain. Karla Goldstein, of 'Dining with the Dietician' fame, devoted one of her three podcasts to giving listeners accurate calorie counts. For instance, she says, a single bagel can contain up to 320 calories. And that's before the cream cheese.

Filling a plate means making choices, especially when you're eating all-you-can in a dining hall packed with variety. And, at least from a nutritional perspective, some choices are better than others.

The dining staff recognizes this.

"Typically, we see students gaining weight just because they're making the wrong choices," says executive chef Joel Blice in a podcast about the freshman 15 posted on the Penn Dining Web site. "They're eating too many of the things that they shouldn't be, really not having the right balance or not making the right choices."

Some students will make the wrong choices no matter what. But others want to eat healthy food - they just don't know what the "right choices" are. And the facts they need to make those choices are contained in a poorly organized, inaccessible book sitting next to an often inaccurate, non-searchable kiosk.

Many students said that readily available information would help them make healthier choices. "Instead of just applying superstition, it would be nice to see the numbers next to [the food]," said Engineering senior Luke Zarko.

Nursing professor Stella Volpe agrees with this approach. "Calorie labeling can at least allow people to think about their purchases. Over time, they may make healthier choices because of the labels," she said. "Not all people will pay attention to them, but even if a small percentage of the population changes their eating habits for healthier choices, that can make a difference in preventing weight gain and chronic disease over the long term."

To that end, Philadelphia recently passed a law mandating that chain restaurants post nutritional information alongside menu items, where customers can see it while deciding what to eat.

The law doesn't tell people what to order, but recognizes an essential truth: Unless people know what they're eating, they can't decide if they really want to.

Mordechai Treiger is a College junior from Seattle, and can be reached at treiger@dailypennsylvanian.com. Fridays with Mordi appears on alternating Fridays.

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