What’s for dinner on campus? More and more often, something green and leafy.
“Thanks for the AWESOME vegetables again tonight (Sunday)! Next time though, could you please use a little less oil? Thank you!”

n n n

“When you gave me iced tea,

you gave me the world.

Thank you.”

“Can there be cous-cous at the salad bar on a more regular basis?”

n n n

“The fried tofu is what I dream

about. Could it replace plain

tofu in the salad bar?”

n n n

“Indonesian Tempeh! Yay!”
Tofu? College kids say Yes!
By Lindsay Tice
Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Winding her way through a maze of food offerings, Amanda Millis is in search of a quick lunch between class and a meeting.

She grabs two small pieces of barbecue-style chicken and three scoops of boiled baby carrots. At the salad bar she fills a bowl with two types of lettuce, mushrooms, green peppers and fat-free honey Dijon dressing.

A few feet away, other serving stations offer pizza, sugary cereals and a pile of peanut butter and chocolate dessert squares. But the Bates College freshman doesn’t even glance at them.

She rarely does.

“Nutrition,” she said, adding a spoonful of Bulgarian wheat to her salad. “I’m just conscious of it, I guess.”

At Bates College, low-fat entrees rule. Tofu and soy milk are preferred choices. And no one has to encourage students to eat their spinach.

“You put any kind of green, leafy vegetable out there: gone,” said dining services director Christine Schwartz.

It’s a health food phenomenon that has enveloped Bates in recent years. And many believe it’s sweeping the country.

“It’s not just meat and potatoes anymore,” she said.

More than 75 percent of Bates College’s 1,700 students eat in the campus dining hall every day. Thirty years ago, their choices would have been basic.

“On the serving line there was beef and chicken. And maybe a pasta,” said dining service supervisor Lenny Belleau, who worked part time for the college in the early 1970s.

Students have asked for more choices since then. Over the past few years, those requests have leaned heavily toward healthy, organic and whole foods.

“The kids are different nowadays,” Belleau said.

Now, between the pizza, pasta and sandwich stations, Bates College has two large salad bars and a large cooler full of soy milk and yogurt. Dispensers provide flavored ice milk and frozen yogurt.

Students snap up ethnic dishes, cooked vegetables and chicken-free nuggets.

The food at Bates has proven so popular that students routinely post napkins scrawled with “thank you” on a board outside the dining hall. In a student survey done by the Princeton Review this year, Bates was rated 10th best in the country for college cuisine.

Millis, a petite 19-year-old, said the school’s healthy choices help her stay thin.

“I don’t want to do the Freshman 15,” she said, referring to a popular belief that first-year college students gain weight.

At the nightly vegan bar, students can get stir-fried tofu, rice pilaf and other dishes made without animal products. At the marche station, they can watch a chef prepare special entrees, such as sushi.

Lean meats, such as turkey and chicken, are popular. So is fish. When they’re served, the school goes through 80 pounds of haddock and 120 pounds of salmon.

Nick Foster, a 19-year-old sophomore, was used to getting fresh, organic foods in his hometown in Oregon. He likes having the same at school.

“That was a small draw to come here at the time. I definitely appreciate it now that I’m here, to know what you’re eating,” said Foster, as he sat down for lunch with a glass of citrus peach juice and a plate piled with chicken, vegetarian egg rolls, sweet potatoes and melon wedges.

Like many Bates students, he also likes knowing that a lot of his food comes straight from local farmers. It’s fresher, he said. It supports the community.

“I definitely like that,” he said.

To keep up with the demand for fresh, local food, Bates has formed a co-op with Bowdoin College in Brunswick and other groups to makes it easier to buy from local farmers.

////Tofu loaf////

The Bates dining services director said her college isn’t the only one seeing students trade butter for soy margarine.

It’s a trend, she said. It’s the way this generation was raised.

“These kids aren’t growing up on meatloaf. They’re growing up on tofu loaf,” said Schwartz.

The University of Maine at Farmington’s food services director agreed.

A few years ago, UMF students drank only a glass or two of soy milk per week.

Now they go through five gallons a day.

“We have it out at every meal. It’s one of our basics out there,” Wayne Robbins said.

Chicken burgers and garden burgers are also popular with the 700 students who eat in the school’s dining hall every day. So are sprouts, tofu, soybeans and spinach.

“It’s not just iceberg lettuce anymore for a tossed salad,” said Robbins.

An employee of ARAMARK, one of the largest food service companies in the country, Robbins said he’s heard the same from his counterparts throughout New England. Danielle Marta, associate director of concept development, said she is seeing students demand vegan, vegetarian and organic foods more and more in every one of of the 400 colleges ARAMARK serves.

“It’s generation X and generation Y,” she said. “Everybody wants to be unique, everybody wants to be natural.”

But while soy and fresh vegetables seem to be gaining in popularity, old-fashioned dishes haven’t gone away completely.

“We still have a good number of hamburgers,” Robbins said.

When Bates freshmen Monica Hayden and Maddie Rubin sat down to lunch one day this week, there wasn’t a salad in sight. Instead, Hayden tried beef and broccoli, tuna noodle casserole and barbecue-style chicken. Rubin, a vegetarian, had a bowl of Rice Krispies.

The 18-year-olds said they enjoy the food at Bates, including whole wheat pasta and other healthy entrees.

But they like the pizza, too.

“I just look around and see what I feel like,” Hayden said.

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