A look back at a semester of eating healthy on campus

TUCSON, Ariz. – So the journey ends.

The impending end of the semester – and my collegiate career – means the end of this blog on where to eat healthy on campus.

I hope the blog will continue to be visited by future UA students looking for a green place to eat on campus.

I’m happy with the work that I’ve done, navigating through the healthy options at the UA while taking a detour to discuss stadium food, among other things.

For those of you late to this blog, below is a one-sentence summary link of all the blogs I’ve done:

Introduction – What is eating green?

Many celebs, common folks flock to M Café for microbiotic eating in LA

How to eat a microbiotic diet

Cellar Restaurant to undergo health-related renovations

Newly-opened Core offers variety of salads on campus

IQ Fresh: a healthier alternative in the Union

Unions offer gluten-free food

Staples Center not all that healthy

Verizon Center not much better

Pro arenas starting to provide healthier alternatives once you get past the junk

Oy Vey Café offers a vegetarian menu in a family atmosphere

How to be a vegetarian at the UA

Eating green easier for Jews during Passover

I hope you enjoyed reading the blog as much as I did writing it.

My final reflections are that in the four years I’ve been a Wildcat, the student unions have made great strides in becoming healthier. When I made my so-called recruiting visit back in the spring of 2004, IQ Fresh wasn’t even around and you pretty much needed to order a salad that had been sitting out for who knows long to eat healthy.

But with students putting more and more emphasis on living a healthy lifestyle, Union operators such as David Galbraith have taken notice and given them what they want.

I anticipate a similar amount of growth in the next four years to the point that not eating healthy on campus will be a personal choice.

Hopefully that means fewer and fewer students will spend their collegiate careers as Panda Express-gulping carnivores like me.

Striving for a green Passover

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Jews hoping to eat healthy this week are probably asking themselves the question, “Why is this week different from all other weeks?"

The answer, of course, is that it’s Passover, an eight-day holiday that started Saturday night in which Jews are not supposed to eat any leavened products because the Jews in ancient Egypt did not have time for their bread to rise while fleeing.

That means saying goodbye to bread, pizza and cereal and a host of other options that a Jew might choose to eat during a normal week.

On the bright side, that makes Passover “one of the easiest and most convenient holidays to eat healthy,” Naomi Winner, the wife of UA Chabad rabbi Yossi Winner, wrote in an e-mail.

Because all flours and grains besides matzah are omitted from an observant Jew’s diet, many of those calories are substituted with fruits and vegetables, Winner wrote. Also, Jews who strictly follow Passover’s dietary laws would likely prepare their food on their own, which is typically healthier than eating out.

“One can eat any fish, chicken or lean cut of meat prepared in a healthy way with any fruit or vegetable,” Winner wrote.

For a Jew looking to eat particularly healthy for Passover, Winner suggested buying whole wheat or spelt matzah instead of the white flour variety.

I’ve uploaded pictures from my family’s seder in Scottsdale, which was fairly healthy thanks in part to my mom, who brought asparagus and fruit.

However, I was very disappointed my grandma did not bake the matzah muffins she’s famous for.

Matzah is a hard cracker Jews eat instead of bread during the holiday, which tastes incredibly plain and dry unless cooked as part of something such as matzah brie (basically matzah soaked and cooked in eggs) or my grandma’s muffins, which are also pretty much eggs and matzah.

My grandma said she chose not to make them this year because nobody should be eating them based on how unhealthy they are (my mom says Grandma puts a whole stick of margarine in there), still a disappointment for me but understandable.

For those having a seder in the future I found this site that explains how to have a healthy Passover, with low carb Gefilte fish, low carb soup and low carb, low fat lemon ice cream.

I found another site on how to have a sustainable Passover. It includes tips such as buying and grating fresh horseradish, substituting a roasted beet for the roasted lamb shank on the seder plate, serving local and ethically sourced meat, buying vegetables at a farmer’s market and most interesting hosting a vegetarian or vegan seder to get rid of your “gastronomical chametz.”

The site says the menu could consist of “almond quinoa salad, matzah lasagna, vegetarian matzah ball soup, roasted new potatoes with rosemary, Israeli salad, borscht (and) garlic sautéed fiddleheads.”

My family certainly did not go that far, although matzah ball soup made up part of a menu that included not very green but incredibly tasty brisket.

As Winner wrote, eating green can be easier for a Jew during Passover because of all the bread-related products eliminated from people’s diets, making more room for fruits and vegetables.

Still, even for somebody trying to eat green, it couldn’t have hurt that much if Grandma had just made those delicious matzah muffins.

It’s no problem being a vegetarian at the UA

TUCSON, Ariz. – I really needed a cheeseburger when I stepped off a plane at the Oakland International Airport during a basketball road trip to the Bay Area schools in January.

When I asked my trip partner, Daily Wildcat photographer Andrew Russell, where he wanted to eat he let me know a surprising secret about himself: he doesn’t eat meat.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, except for the fact none of my friends really practice vegetarianism. That and the other Daily Wildcat photographer I’ve made a road trip with orders a hamburger at practically every restaurant we go to.

Surprisingly, Russell was still up for what I feel to be a must-eat on a short trip to California, In-N-Out Burger.

Russell ordered a lettuce burger without any meat on it, which is the last thing I would ever do when eating at In-N-Out.

“For me it’s not the meat I like, it’s the stuff they put on it,” Russell said about the burger chain.

For all subsequent meals we always had to factor in what a vegetarian could eat, a different experience for me because I typically only think about what place has a good meat entrée when choosing where to dine. Surprisingly, we never found much difficulty finding a place that suited both of us.

I was curious where a vegetarian like Russell eats on campus, short of going to a vegetarian restaurant like Oy Vey Café profiled in this blog last week.

Russell said he often eats lunch on campus, with veggie burgers at the Park Student Union being a favorite of his, and other times he opts for one of the sandwich joints on University Boulevard, such as Which Wich?, Silver Mine Subs and Jimmy John’s.

“Everywhere has at least one thing,” Russell said. “I’m not going to go to a steakhouse or something.”

Russell, who eats food some total vegetarians won’t like gelatin, started eating this way in the middle of last summer after seeing how the diet works for his girlfriend. He said if they had not started dating it likely would not have entered his mind as a life choice, but meeting her introduced him to the whole new world of vegetarianism.

“I like to think at times it can be healthier,” Russell said. “I went a couple weeks without eating meat and I ate meat again and it gave me a headache every day for the next week, so it’s not that right now I feel, ‘Oh, I feel so much better not eating meat,’ but I know if I eat meat I won’t feel (as well) as much.”

Russell said he does not personally know anybody else on campus who is a vegetarian but figures there must be a number of them in the Students Organized for Animal Rights (SOAR) group, which has put on meatouts the past few years to encourage students not to eat meat.

On the UA College of Agriculture & Life Sciences Web site, Dr. Scottie Misner – a nutrition specialist – writes about the different levels of vegetarianism.

Total vegetarians do not eat any animal products, like Russell’s girlfriend. Lacto-vegetarians eat dairy but no other animal products including eggs, ovo-vegetarians eat eggs but no other kinds of animal products, lacto-ovo-vegetarians eat just dairy, eggs and plant food but no kind of meat and semi-vegetarians avoid red meat but eat food like chicken and fish.

Russell falls into the category of being a lacto-ovo-vegetarian.

The site also goes through a sample daily food guide for vegetarians, which includes pasta, dark-green leafy vegetables, citrus fruits, nonfat dairy products and tofu.

Misner finishes with a final word on the importance of eating from each food group. In a vegetarian diet lacking meat it’s still essential to make sure you get enough protein.

That’s one problem I’ve never had to worry about.

Oy Vey Café provides vegetarian food, personal atmosphere

TUCSON, Ariz. – If you regularly enjoy lunch at Oy Vey Café you probably know Joyce Terry.

Terry, the manager of the vegetarian café located in the Hillel Center’s building, offers healthy, kosher food and a friendly atmosphere steps outside the main Student Union.

Oy Vey Café’s menu includes salads, quiches, sandwiches and paninis made fresh daily by Terry and her staff.

“The students are so bogged down and they use up so much of their energy, so if they can eat healthy they’re just going to be a lot better off,” said Terry, who has spent 10 years at her position and knows many of the students’ typical orders by heart.

Just this year the café, which has been open for about 17 years, has integrated some organic products into its mix, and next year plans are in the works to make the menu completely organic, although Terry could not guarantee that would happen.

Terry said the café also has been doing research into buying reusable, recyclable products such as silverware, utensils, cups and paper goods, hoping Oy Vey Café can do away with the Styrofoam cups it currently uses.

But you won’t find the restaurant more than referenced with the vending machines on the Student Union’s dining site because it’s not a Union entity, and Terry prides herself on building up a strong customer base mainly from word of mouth.

“That’s when you know it’s good,” Terry said. “We do no advertising whatsoever. Nothing.”

When Terry started 10 years ago she said the restaurant served about 60 people daily, a number that has since ballooned to about 150-200 people per day.

Although it features a Jewish name and is nestled inside of the Hillel building, Terry said Oy Vey Café is much more than just a Jewish place. She said students from the Newman Center are frequent visitors, as are vegetarians and others who enjoy the Mediterranean fare offered.

Terry admitted the prices at Oy Vey Café are a bit higher than what students might pay at the Union because it’s a kosher product, but she said she keeps an edge on that to make sure the prices are comparable.

“I think that we’re strong as what we have to offer for the quality of our food, and it’s a little more personal,” Terry said, “so I think a lot of people like to come here also because it feels comfortable and it’s kind of like a place for them to go that they know that they’re welcome, and I don’t think that they get that at the Union.

“I think people don’t mind paying because you do, everybody that comes in here I know their name, and I think that they’re getting a little more special touch. … So I think that’s important to them, too.”

After saying that Terry looked over to a student enjoying a panini for lunch and said, “Don’t you think, Jacob? I’ve known Jacob for how many years? Three?”

That personal atmosphere – not to mention the vegetarian, kosher food – makes Oy Vey Café one of the hidden gems of healthy eating on campus.