Today I was meeting my friend for lunch at Lenoir Mainstreet, which is what Carolina Dining Services named the group of fast food places on the first floor of Lenoir. Because of my lunch date and boredom, I went to the CDS Web site, to see my lunch options for the day.
To my surprise, the Web site had been updated to include a sustainability pledge and nutritional information for the food served at Lenoir and Ram’s Head Dining Hall. Immediately, I navigated to the nutritional information page for the Top of Lenoir’s cafeteria food.
Confession: I like to look up the nutritional information for almost everything. Not in an obsessive, calorie-counting sort of way, but with all the hype about super-sized restaurant portions and trans fat, I like to see what and how much restaurants and fast food establishments are serving us.
Given the different meal options, Lenoir surprised me with some of the nutritional goodness the information revealed. Some of the top healthy choices at Lenoir:
From the bistro section:
1. Vegetable blend
2. Sweet potatoes, roasted
3. Bok choy and baby corn
4. Asparagus, grilled
From the grill section:
1. Blackened chicken breast
From the pizza section:
1. Vegetable pizza
2. Mediterranean pizza
Lenoir offers other options too, such as vegetarian, soup, a salad bar and a world fares section that samples foods from across the globe. With the nutritional information available for students, it is easier to decide how to make a Lenoir meal healthy, and the transparency encourages Lenoir to continue serving healthy options. There also are kiosks in the dining hall for students to access nutritional information on the spot, which can encourage healthy choices to prevent the Freshman 15 (oh, it’s real).
There are some problems with the information on Lenoir’s nutrition information site. First, there is not nutritional information for every item on the menu. Also, the serving sizes are not realistic. When you are in line at the bistro, waiting to spoon some beef burgundy with noodles onto your plate (if that actually sounds appealing to you, get over to Lenoir on Wednesday, the day it is served) , it is hard to eyeball a serving size of six ounces. Also, the nutritional information for every food item lacks a list of ingredients. I want to know what is in my food, which is just as important as how many calories or grams of protein or fat are in it.
And, for the best part, the foods that made my eyes bug out in disbelief. To put the nutrition facts in perspective, most of the nutritional information on food packages is based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet. Individual calorie needs vary based on sex, height, weight and level of physical activity. You can calculate how many calories you need a day by using this calorie calculator.
1. BBQ bacon cheese burger combo – 1024 calories per combo, 52 grams of fat
2. Buffalo chicken wrap – 1157 calories per wrap, 68 grams of fat
3. Chicken Caesar wrap – 888 calories per wrap, 36 grams of fat
And for those of you who are trying to eat all your daily calories in one sitting, there is the seasoned wings bar, where one plate has 2399 calories and 159 grams of fat. I wonder how many wings are considered a serving? Checking the nutritional information can help you to make the right choices for your diet, whatever it might be. Plus, in a nation obsessed with both obesity and the “perfect” body, we should ask all food establishments to post both their nutritional information and list of ingredients, so we can decide for ourselves if we want to indulge or not.
Happy dining!
