Rutgers administrator, students discuss healthy eating at Harvest dining hall
College students living on campus often struggle finding healthy and nutritious dining options. But now, those seeking a break from ramen noodles and Brower Commons have a new option.
The Harvest dining venue opened in September of 2015 on Cook campus in collaboration with the Department of Food Science. The venue aims to provide students with fresh, locally sourced alternatives to typical dining hall food.
“Harvest is the first operation of its kind at Rutgers. Dining halls make a lot of things fresh daily, but at Harvest, everything is made fresh daily using whole foods,” said David Donlon, the director of Neilson Dining hall.
Featuring stations for pizzettes, flatbreads, noodles, salads, grains and smoothies, Harvest seeks to encourage people to "eat well" and "live well," according to the venue's webpage.
The venue offers students a chance to customize their meals to create unique combinations, placing an emphasis on the coexistence of flavor and health, both key to the institution's mission.
Harvest is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday and operates both a breakfast and lunch service according to the website.
The new dining venue has encountered two obstacles on its path to mainstream popularity— location and visibility.
While its location in the lobby of the New Jersey Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health allow for more convenient access to locally sourced ingredients, students living outside the Cook/Douglass campuses have difficulty reaching Harvest.
“I don’t step on Douglass ever,” said Isabel Lim, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore. “I don’t have any classes there and generally I don’t want to take a trip there.”
Despite the location, Lim said she was excited about the concept behind Harvest and would still be willing make the effort to go check it out.
“Healthy eating is really important to me and it’s kind of hard to find healthy food here because most of the dining halls don’t offer too many options,” she said.
A similar complaint was made by Richard Faringthon, a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student who said he plans on visiting Harvest for the first time later this week.
“Regular dining halls don’t have enough healthy options available and I tend to have a hard time finding food that's good for me,” Farnsworth said. “I feel as though most college students have accepted that healthy eating is impossible in college.”
The lack of healthy options is something Donlon is working to change.
Several of Harvest's grain salads and vegan meals have been added to Neilson Dining Hall's menu— a change that Donlon said has garnered significant praise.
He said he believes Harvest's commitment to health will revolutionize the way that typical dining halls operate, though the change can only come if more people are aware of Harvest.
“Getting the word out there to students is important. We want to make it a destination for everyone,” Donlon said. “The underlying goal is to incorporate a truly healthy dining lifestyle into student’s lives ... I think the need for healthy food will continue to grow generation to generation.”
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Kira Herzog is a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student majoring in political science and journalism and media studies. She is a contributing writer for The Daily Targum. Follow her on Twitter @kiraherzog1 for more.
