Story by Joshua Dolgoff
TRACK 1: Safety… it’s the most important quality on a college campus nowadays. But a spot where that might be overlooked…the dining halls
SOT 1 :05 “Allergies continue to be on the rise. So we’re trying to kind of stay in tune with what students are looking for.”
Super:
:10 Lauren Smith/Director of Nutrition and Wellness
TRACK 2: According to a 2021 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6.2% percent of adults in the United States deal with a food allergy.
To see how North Carolina dining halls handle food allergies themselves… we started by talking to Lauren Smith, the Director of Nutrition and Wellness at North Carolina State University… and right off the bat… a top solution WAS providing new food stations that address every allergen.
SOT 2 :14 “We have a station that’s called Simply Made. We’ve created this station that is free of the top nine allergens, and it always has a vegan protein as well. So that station was a direct impact of students looking for more options that suit their needs.”
TRACK 3: On top of that, NC State has recently implemented Uproot plant based milk, which contains chocolate pea milk, soy milk, and oat milk.
And the best part is, NC State has an app called “On Campus” that allows students to look ahead and plan their meals accordingly..
SOT 4 :08 “That dining part of the app allows students to click on each location to see the hours to see the complete menu and to see the full nutrition and ingredient breakdown.”
TRACK 4: After spending the morning with Smith and the Wolfpack… it was time to go back to Chapel Hill and see how UNC’s dining experience stacked up.
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Now we reached out to Carolina Dining Services but did not receive a response. UNC Media Relations also declined our request for an on-camera interview with a member of CDS… so as a result… we took our questions to the students.
TRACK 5: Meet senior Stuart Wanamaker, who has a severe peanut allergy, but believes that UNC’s dining halls have done a great job accommodating students like him.
SOT 5 :10 “They have a lot of outlines on their menus and on the screens about what contains what, so it’s pretty easy to navigate. And if there was ever anything that I thought was questionable, I could always ask and they normally had the answer on hand.”
Super:
1:45 Stuart Wanamaker/UNC Senior
TRACK 6: UNC was recognized by Food Allergy Research & Education for having one of the NATIONS’s Best Campus Dining services for students with food allergies.
Bobby Peters, Chairperson of UNC’s Student Dining Board, acknowledges the steps the university has taken to provide safe options for those students.
SOT 6 :09 “There’s the stations which don’t have any food with the top like nine allergens… There’s also the stress less cabinets in both Chase and Lenoir which don’t have gluten.”
Super:
2:09 Bobby Peters/UNC Senior
TRACK 7: By taking these precautionary steps, it helps ensure a safe and healthy eating environment on campus.
SOT 7 :12 “It’s extremely important for someone with allergies I mean… if I ingest peanuts, I go into anaphylactic shock and I could be dead within minutes, so it’s essential for people who have to deal with those kind of allergies.”
TRACK 8: I’m Joshua Dolgoff, reporting.
