2008 Woodie Awards
Letter to the editor: Vegans need consideration
Opinion | 4/9/08
As I reached for The Towerlight Monday morning, I was immediately drawn to a large food pyramid comprising of pretzels, Ramen and beer and an obnoxious font telling me to "Chew On This."
Food politics is a subject that's becoming increasingly significant in American society and I was curious to see upon what arguments the people of Towson could shed some light. To my fevered dismay, most of the issues covered in the several articles on campus nutrition and dining were riddled with contradictions and upheld the campus-wide misunderstanding of vegetarian and vegan lifestyles. I was surprised that the word vegetarian actually came up more than once (it appeared twice) and was even more excited to see an entire column on the trials and tribulations of a vegetarian student. These efforts, however, proved useless in creating awareness or insight into the degree to which veganism can essentially solve every problem mentioned in the issue.
Dowell Health Center's Dr. Jane Halpern commented that students "are getting into vegetarianism and health conscious kinds of eating." Note that she used health and vegetarianism in the same sentence, with the same connotation. She goes on to talk about how "easy and available" fast food is on campus and how this leads to students developing poor health. Given said information, is it not screamingly obvious that in order to increase health on campus, more vegetarian options should be provided? The health of the student body received a lot of attention throughout the pages. Apparently, we are getting fatter. We exercise less. We eat poorly and we make bad decisions.
Is this entirely our fault? Or is it in part due to the swill we're provided with at our dining halls? There is rarely anything but fried food and buckets of cholesterol sitting around. The salad bars that sit in between the soft drinks and grilled cheese are endearing but we need more than iceberg lettuce and stale tomatoes to create a sufficient meal. There is a correlation between the 880 calories from meat and 271 calories from fried food mentioned in the food pyramid and the health of students. Notice the prominence of those high calorie foods on campus versus the availability of the 52 calories from vegetables. If we are offered healthy foods, we will eat healthy foods. It's a simple equation.
Food politics is a subject that's becoming increasingly significant in American society and I was curious to see upon what arguments the people of Towson could shed some light. To my fevered dismay, most of the issues covered in the several articles on campus nutrition and dining were riddled with contradictions and upheld the campus-wide misunderstanding of vegetarian and vegan lifestyles. I was surprised that the word vegetarian actually came up more than once (it appeared twice) and was even more excited to see an entire column on the trials and tribulations of a vegetarian student. These efforts, however, proved useless in creating awareness or insight into the degree to which veganism can essentially solve every problem mentioned in the issue.
Dowell Health Center's Dr. Jane Halpern commented that students "are getting into vegetarianism and health conscious kinds of eating." Note that she used health and vegetarianism in the same sentence, with the same connotation. She goes on to talk about how "easy and available" fast food is on campus and how this leads to students developing poor health. Given said information, is it not screamingly obvious that in order to increase health on campus, more vegetarian options should be provided? The health of the student body received a lot of attention throughout the pages. Apparently, we are getting fatter. We exercise less. We eat poorly and we make bad decisions.
Is this entirely our fault? Or is it in part due to the swill we're provided with at our dining halls? There is rarely anything but fried food and buckets of cholesterol sitting around. The salad bars that sit in between the soft drinks and grilled cheese are endearing but we need more than iceberg lettuce and stale tomatoes to create a sufficient meal. There is a correlation between the 880 calories from meat and 271 calories from fried food mentioned in the food pyramid and the health of students. Notice the prominence of those high calorie foods on campus versus the availability of the 52 calories from vegetables. If we are offered healthy foods, we will eat healthy foods. It's a simple equation.
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