When looking around at different food choices in eateries on campus such as Talley or the Atrium, many students tend to make unhealthy food choices and go straight for the pizza and burgers. But University Dining has worked the past couple of years to offer healthier options around all of campus.
Lisa Eberhart serves as campus dietitian for University Dining, and she is available to help students’ diets as well as create healthy campus dining halls. In her career, Eberhart was the first dietitian in North Carolina to receive the Governor’s Award for Excellence.
Eberhart studied nutrition at Iowa State University, and she was brought to North Carolina by a job in Cary where she consulted with athletes. About 15 years ago she began working with Student Health as the athletic dietitian, student health dietitian and the dining dietitian. Six years ago she decided to work solely for dining because she wanted to focus on elevating the dining program to be one of the healthiest college food services in the nation. In 2014, University Dining was named to FoodService Director Magazine’s list of the 15 healthiest food service operations in the country.
According to Eberhart, students and people are much more adventurous with food today. There are so many different ideas being thrown around, along with such creativity, that incorporating that into the dining halls has become more important than ever.
“About 15 years ago, a lot of students who came to college never tasted sushi or other unusual foods that now every student is familiar with,” Eberhart said.
Eberhart works with Executive Chef Bill Brizzolara to try to accommodate for students’ needs on the table while still aiming to offer an innovative and healthy menu. Food changes so much over time, and just like fashion has trends, so does food.
“I think the food has morphed from a meat-and-potato-casserole-style menu to a modern, on-trend, fresh-cooked-to-order and display-style cooking,” Brizzolara said. “I cannot tell you how many times former students from 10 or 15 years ago stop and tell me how good the food is now and how they wish they could go back to school for it.”
Although it may seem easy to be able to pick out what is healthy and what is not at different dining locations, some students struggle without even knowing that visiting a campus dietitian is completely free and to their benefit. A dietitian can give students tips on how to stay on track, which can be anything from logging your food and calorie counting to what types of plates of food you should be eating.
“Everything on campus is linked to MyFitnessPal, so people can go online and find nutritional facts on every single food place on campus,” Eberhart said. You can also link your Fitbit to MyFitnessPal as well. It’ll give you a better view of the types of foods you are eating, because the app divides everything up to tell you whether you need more protein, carbohydrates or fats.”
One healthy strategy that Eberhart suggests is asking yourself before you eat a meal, “Does my plate look colorful?” or, “Do I have any vegetables on my plate?” If you see mostly brown, she said, it probably isn’t a meal you should be eating.
University Dining holds several events, but one in particular that stands out is Dietitian’s Dish. Every Monday, it provides a sample plate with the food being served that day to give students an idea of what a healthy plate looks like.
“It’s more about passive learning to show that there are healthy, fresh, colorful things in the dining hall,” Eberhart said.
