There's no question that Brown's on-campus eateries do a better job of catering to a vegetarian diet than do most college dining facilities. As members of Brown's community of vegans and vegetarians, we appreciate the efforts of Dining Services to accommodate our dietary choices. Yet we find the coverage in the recent Herald article ("Brown's reputation among vegetarians is Grade A," Oct. 30) to be remarkably one-sided and incomplete. While better than average, Brown's vegan and vegetarian options still leave something to be desired.
Most Brown students know the "Roots & Shoots" section of the Sharpe Refectory as the "vegetarian section," but probably fewer stop to think about what this really means. In our discussions with Dining Services through the Brown Veg*n Club - which has since been renamed the Brown Animal Rights Club - we have learned that Dining Services uses definitions of "vegan" and "vegetarian" that include ingredients most actual vegans and vegetarians eschew. For example, most vegetarians will at least try to avoid eating gelatin (a product derived from collagen in the tendons, ligaments, and tissues of animals), which is found in certain packaged yogurts sometimes sold at the supposedly all-vegetarian Ivy Room at night.
Of course, one might argue that if we want food that meets our standard of vegetarianism, we should read the ingredients for each dish before we eat it. After all, ingredient listings are available in both the Ratty and Verney-Woolley Dining Hall. Unfortunately, these are of little use when they tell us only that the Ratty's Black Bean Burgers are packaged veggie burgers. They might similarly leave one wondering whether the canned refried beans contain lard (as many refried beans do), whether cheeses contain animal rennet or whether the margarine used in recipes contains whey.
An absence of labeling on some foods has also served to make finding meals harder than it needs to be. Last semester, when talking to Dining Services, we were surprised to learn that soy yogurt is available from the salad bar at the Ratty during some weeks. The soy yogurt had been completely unlabeled, and, owing to its visual similarity to dairy-based yogurt, no vegan would have thought to try it. In the V-Dub, labeling is even more frequently a problem, as vegetarian dishes are often placed alongside similar meat dishes without labels to distinguish them.
Even ignoring the aforementioned somewhat technical issues, sometimes the menu makes it genuinely difficult - particularly for vegans - to obtain a nutritious meal. In some cases, this could be rectified by relatively modest changes to a recipe. For example, falafel served in the Ratty contains eggs and is therefore not compatible with a vegan diet. Yet a quick Google search for "falafel recipes" turned up a number of recipes, and of the first 25, all but four were vegan. Lest one should think that the Ratty would sacrifice palatability by switching to a vegan falafel recipe, East Side Pockets has promised to supply BARC with vegan falafel for an upcoming event, and - let's face it - how many students would choose Ratty falafel over East Side Pockets?
Good vegetarian and vegan sources of protein can be especially hard to find in the dining halls. This is particularly the case on weekends, when breakfast foods, most of which are not vegan and whose calories are primarily in the form of carbohydrates, invade the Roots & Shoots section at lunch. On Saturday, Nov. 3, for example, vegans found Mediterranean stew and cold tofu from the noodle bowl bar to be their only significant sources of protein at lunch at the Ratty.
As vegans and vegetarians, we're used to having fewer options than our peers when it comes to food. We don't expect Dining Services - or all of our readers - to agree with our dietary choices or the ideas that lead us to make them. What we hope others can agree with, though, is that as paying customers of Dining Services, we should receive access to reasonably complete information about our food and a wide enough selection of food to eat a varied diet. We hope that Dining Services will work with us to better meet these objectives.
Adam Merberg '08, Adam Hoffman '10 and Eric Gastfriend '10 are members of the Brown Animal Rights Club.
