UCA has a ton of dedicated supporters working behind the scenes to ensure its students are primed for success. The real unsung heroes, however, operate UCA Dining, and they do it well.

Now, if you went to any campus across the nation and asked a student how they felt about their college’s cafeteria food, they would likely grimace or wrinkle their nose in disgust. While preparing large portions of food for hours on end might remove a bit of the originality, the effort by the dining staff, especially here at UCA, must be acknowledged. 

UCA Dining goes above and beyond to provide students with accessible meals, meet dietary needs and plan fun events, all while promoting sustainability and minimizing environmental impact. Most of this effort goes into programs and events that are not fully utilized or recognized by UCA students. 

The user-friendly website makes it easy to navigate and access menus for each meal of the day, reload dining dollars and choose meal plans. Not only that, it provides information on the vegan and vegetarian options on the menu for the day. 

There are vegan options on every menu, and these options extend past a sad excuse for a salad bar. In 2021, the Innova Health and Nutrition Survey found that nearly 23% of people aged 18-25 follow vegan or vegetarian dietary guidelines. With such a large portion of college-aged people requiring these options, it is important that college cafeterias are meeting that demand. Not only is UCA’s dining team satisfying that need, but they are also actively creating recipes that make it onto each menu. 

UCA Dining’s team of chefs and dietitians provides free nutrition counseling and meal-planning assistance to students. In a list of menu commitments on their website, the team shows its dedication to a culturally-diverse menu “featuring traditional favorites, ethnic dishes and international flavor,” and also focuses on reducing sodium and unhealthy fats in their recipes while using local ingredients. 

A balanced diet goes hand-in-hand with a successful pursuance of education. For many students, especially those without reliable transportation or income, on-campus dining provides the only meals that are accessible to them throughout the week. According to Wilder Research, nutrition has the capacity to “affect students’ thinking skills, behavior and health, all factors that impact academic performance.”

Through UCA Dining programs like Eat Well, students are made aware of which items on the menu are “naturally dense whole foods and are lower in calories, saturated fat and sodium,” according to the UCA Dining website. The dining team has also committed to a “Plant-Forward” style of cooking and eating. This emphasizes fruits and vegetables in main dishes, benefiting students nutritionally and the larger community through sustainability. 

While UCA Dining helps campus by purchasing local produce, recycling one hundred percent of their fryer oil, using environmentally friendly cleaning products and saving water and energy, they also host a ton of events — both in and out of the cafeteria — to appeal to students. Some examples include the UCA Homecoming Food Truck Festival, Dining Around the World, Dietician Spotlights, Carnival in the Cafe and many more. 

The dining staff, from the dietitians to the cafeteria workers, seamlessly provide our campus with a variety of meals and opportunities to experience new flavors. So, next time you criticize the cafeteria food, take a second to consider how much work goes into making sure that food reaches your plate.