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Savannah Young

Scott Erdiakoff

Sequence 3

English 134-42

16 November 2017

Allergy Miscommunications

Thousands of people eat from the Cal Poly venues daily, but does anyone truly know

what they are eating? Dietary food concerns have been a big issue on campus for both students

and faculty and it is time someone did something to help fix it. There are 21 restaurants, serving

stations, and food trucks on campus. Sixteen different venues on campus allow students to use

their plus dollars, except Myrons. As a freshman at Cal Poly, you are required to pay for room

and board, which includes a meal plan. The campus is not willing to negotiate with students with

regard to the meal plan. This mandatory meal plan causes students who want to cook their own

meals because of their allergies to have to purchase pre-prepared foods. The campus believes

that they provide enough options for everyone and that no student should receive special

treatment. As a student with allergies, I tried to talk to housing and food services. However, they

turned me down and told me that I could work with the on-campus dietician to figure out which

venues on campus will work to ensure my dietary needs. After meeting with the dietician, Megan

Coats, I was directed towards an online website called the Cal Poly nutrition calculator. She said

that I would be able to see all the ingredients that go into every prepared on-campus dish here,

but I faced two problems. The first was that the website only listed whether the food contained

the four most common food allergens: gluten, dairy, soy, and peanuts. The second problem was

that the food services decided to change the recipes of all of the campus dishes this year and did
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not update the online listings until mid-October. School started in the beginning of September.

For over a month of school, students had to navigate and ask the kitchen staff whether certain

foods had certain allergens. Standing in the long food lines, I would have to take the time out of

other peoples lives to make the food service staff walk back into the kitchen to properly ask the

chef about the way the food was prepared. Students had to decide whether to take risks and hope

it would not hurt their health or find pre-packaged foods at the campus markets. Instead, all food

should be labelled, whether packaged or freshly prepared, to avoid as best as possible the

possibility of someone having a preventable reaction to the food served.

Currently, there are eight main common allergens that are widely recognized across the

country. Eight food allergens account for 90% of all food-allergic reactions in the United States:

milk, egg, peanut, tree nut, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat/gluten (Cal Poly Dining). This shows

that the Cal Poly campus knows and has taken into account that there are eight very common

allergens across the nation. So why is campus dining only putting in an effort to label four of

these allergens?

Several studies have been completed across the nation to help track these food allergy

patterns. A research survey conducted by the allergy and clinical immunology clinic at the

University of Michigan in 2009 where the university discovered that food allergy reactions have

been quite common on college campuses: A total of 513 individuals responded, with 57%

reporting an allergic reaction to food. Of this group, 36.2% reported symptoms consistent with

anaphylaxis, and these reactions frequently occurred while enrolled (Mosby). Of the percentage

of students that took part in the study, more than half had an allergic reaction to food on a college

campus. This either means that college campuses are mislabeling or not labelling the food that

they serve to students, or students are discovering their allergies for the first time. Studies have
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shown that many students actually do discover food intolerances while going away from home

for the first time and, Given an emerging epidemic of food allergy over the past 10 years, more

individuals who attend college will likely have a food allergy (Mosby). With more and more

individuals discovering their intolerances, whether that be lactose intolerancet, Celiac, or food

allergies, it is crucial to start labelling or providing alternate options to help prevent these

reactions.

Not only does not labelling food on campus cause people with allergies to suffer, but it

also affects vegans and vegetarians. They have to guess which foods do or do not have animal

products in them which can result in the same kind of hassles with chefs in addition to

miscommunication. According to the Vegan Bits, two percent of the entire world eats a vegan

diet. However, the United States of America is listed as the top country in the world for people

eating vegan with 240,000 vegans. California is also in the top five listings for the state with the

most number of vegans. This shows that there is a very large vegan and vegetarian population on

Cal Polys campus. So, why are students forced to guess what is in all of their food instead of

having it labelled with containing animal products?

The Cal Poly campus actually does label some of the food that they serve. They have an

online nutrition calculator which claims to list all of the food served on campus at each of the

different venues. However, the calculator only lists

some menu items with their calories, fat, sodium,

fiber, and sugar levels in addition to whether they

are vegetarian, vegan and gluten free, and contain

dairy, soy, or peanuts (Cal Poly Dining). The

picture on the right shows the options that appear

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for a student who selects that they are vegan, gluten free, soy free, dairy free, and peanut free.

The selection includes what the calculator lists as 79 entrees. However, if someone were to

look at the listing, they would see that 21 of the entrees are actually coffee drinks, 23 are

condiments, and 20 are frozen fruits and vegetables that can be placed into smoothies. This

leaves only 15 real foods for someone with severe dietary restrictions to choose from.

However, there are also duplicate listings for foods. For example, French fries are sold from five

different locations on campus, so the nutrition calculator lists them all as their own entrees. This

eliminates the list down to 11 entrees. Yet, this problem is repeated with beans and rice dishes

served throughout campus. So, when the foods are broken down into real entrees with no

duplicates, there are only six different dishes offered on campus for someone with all of the

listed dietary restrictions. Imagine walking into an all-you-can eat buffet, different stations all

around you for all the same price meal, but you can only serve yourself two dishes, one of them

being salad. Its as if you can only eat at a Chick-fil-A for the rest of your life and even then,

there are more than six dishes on the menu. All of these dishes are also not available every day,

they are rotated out, so sometimes it is difficult for students to find safe foods that they can eat.

Many students do actually live like this. Freshman at Cal Poly, Kaila Fritch, studying

environmental earth and soil sciences, faces these issues. She has an extremely severe case of

Celiac disease where the smallest grain of gluten would cause her to be vomiting for hours

followed by months of fatigue. Because of this, she is required to pick and choose what she eats

on campus very particularly. During her week of welcome on campus, she was taken to 805

Kitchen where she decided to eat from the certified gluten free station. Later that week, the

whole student body received an email from campus dining: Campus Dining makes every

attempt to identify ingredients that may cause allergic reactions for those with food allergies.
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Along with employee training, Campus Dining labels items with known allergen-containing

ingredients; however, there is always a risk of contamination. There is also a possibility that

manufacturers of the commercial food we use could change the formulation at any time, without

notice. Customers concerned with food allergies need to be aware of this risk... Campus Dining

will not assume any liability for adverse reactions to foods consumed, or items one may come in

contact with while eating at any university establishment. This email was very alarming,

considering the school received certification from the National Foundation for Celiac

Awareness (NFCA) for achieving GREAT Schools status, which exemplifies high standards in

gluten-free food services (Cal Poly Dining). There were also multiple complaints posted on the

Cal Poly parent Facebook page about their children having allergic reactions due to cross

contamination at supposedly gluten free stations. After hearing about these horror stories, I just

couldnt make myself risk my health to try to spend my Plus dollars, Fritch exclaimed.

Kaila Fritch is not the only one that has to work around these food limitations. Multiple

students have had reactions due to cross contamination and labelling. Freshman Berit Ashby,

studying civil engineering at Cal Poly was told misinformation from Red Radish during her

second week at school. She recounts, I asked the person making my salad if they knew whether

the balsamic vinaigrette was vegan because Im allergic to eggs and dairy. The lady behind the

counter shook her head saying it was completely allergen free and not to worry, so I believed

her. However, I later called after having a minor anaphylactic reaction and was read the

ingredients of the dressing over the phone; it contained eggs and traces of dairy. This

miscommunication between the kitchen staff and dining crew could have cost someone their life.

The nutrition calculator online states that the dressing is both vegan and gluten free which
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originally, I thought meant that the nutritionist is mislabeling their

foods and ingredients, which will lead to more allergic reactions.

However, the current ingredients are listed in a picture to the left and

are shown to be vegan and gluten free. This leads to the conclusion

that the kitchen staff switched the dealer of their salad dressing. In

most cases this would be better, however, students who had previously checked and know they

can eat the ingredients in the old dressing may accidentally be served the new dressing without

realizing it which can lead to another food intolerance.

These mishaps with miscommunication and cross contamination are extremely dangerous

and there are very simple ways to fix the current problems. First, all dishes need to be labelled

with exactly their exact containiningredients and visible for all students to view when needed. If

printing out all of the ingredient listings are is an issue for the environment, then have them

available to be seen online. Second, more people need to be educated on the dangers of cross

contamination. A dish that is made to be dairy free cannot be mixed using the same spoon as

another dish that also contains dairy. And third, if the dining services cannot meet these requests,

then students should be allowed to have special meal plans so that they can decide whether to use

their money to buy a salad on campus or a different dish that may be more nutritionally valuable

that can be retained off campus. You may be thinking, what if students start to steal the kitchen

staffs recipes? However, a listing on the ingredients in a certain dish does not give the exact

quantities of the foods that go into the dish, just the dishes ingredients itself. This would make it

extremely hard for students to recreate the exact campus dining food. So, instead of sending

students on a ping pong battle with their health, campus dining should support certain dietary

restrictions by labelling all of the foods served throughout the entire campus.
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Works Cited

Dining, Cal Poly Campus. Dietary Restrictions. Cal Poly Dining.,

www.calpolydining.com/nutrition/dietaryrestrictions/.

Dining, Cal Poly Campus. Gluten Free. Cal Poly Dining.,

www.calpolydining.com/nutrition/glutenfree/.

Food allergy and food allergy attitudes among college students. Journal of Allergy and

Clinical Immunology, Mosby, 27 June 2009,

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674909008392.

Kuper, Arthur, et al. Vegan Demographics 2017 - USA, and the world. Vegan Bits, 23 May

2017, veganbits.com/vegan-demographics-2017/.

McCoy, Lexi. Being vegan at Cal Poly. Mustang News, 3 Apr. 2016, mustangnews.net/being-

vegan-at-cal-poly/.

Study Sheds Light on Cal Poly Food Environment. Study Sheds Light on Cal Poly Food

Environment - College of Science and Mathematics - Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo,

www.cosam.calpoly.edu/news/cal-poly-food-environment.