At the Core of UA students’ diets

TUCSON, Ariz. – The UA Student Union has long been known as a place where finding a crisp-looking salad can be about as hard as discovering filet mignon.

That changed with the opening of salad restaurant Core at the beginning of the school year right in the heart of the Union.

Core, which goes by the slogan “food your body loves,” offers a menu of salads with a plethora of healthy toppings for consumers to choose from starting at $5.49 for a basic salad, with protein toppings and dressings costing extra.

The salads include vegetables like bell peppers, tomato wedges and cucumbers and proteins like marinated tofu, salami and sautéed shrimp on top of lettuce like crisp romaine or fresh baby spinach. Rice and dressings can be added as well as soups, all of which start with the preface “vegetarian.”

Thus far the response from students to this new kind of restaurant has been “overwhelming,” according to David Galbraith, the Assistant Director of Arizona Student Unions.

"I didn’t think it would be quite this well received,” he said. “It’s pretty surprising. I don’t think anyone dreamed we would get that many people to dine there a day. It’s getting some definite national attention because people know one’s done, that (we’ve) pulled this one off. Nobody’s gone to this ingredient level and system.”

Galbraith added Core has gotten written up by trade magazines, as Union administrators around the country look to Arizona as an example.

Although Galbraith and his crew came up with the idea for the concept of the restaurant, it then went to UA Prof. Jackson Boelts’ design class, where students competed to come up with the design for the restaurant.

Acacia Betancourt, a UA graphic design senior, ended up with the top model, which eventually became Core.

She picked the name because it means many things and she thought everybody could relate with it at some level.

“Core is the core of your body, core food groups would be served at the restaurant and just core is the essence or most important part of something,” she said. “I felt the name really reflected the food well and the whole healthy idea behind it.”

She came up with Core’s logo with the bean sprouting out of the ‘o’ because the bean is meant to symbolize the beginning of something, in this case the new trend in healthy eating on campus.

The first couple months Core was open Betancourt said she joined the crowds by eating there about once a week.

“I really like the salads,” she said. “They’re really cheap and give you a lot of food, and I like being able to pick foods.”

Galbraith, who has been in this industry for about 35 years, said he was skeptical at first about placing a salad eatery in the middle of a Student Union better known for fast food, as he was not sure if there would be actual financial support from UA eaters to match the cries for healthier food.

He attributes the restaurant’s success to how students have changed mainly over the last three years.

“A year or two ago it was getting pretty serious,” Galbraith said. “Last year I said, ‘It’s finally time.’ A lot of it is a gut feeling, what can I pull off and succeed at.”

If the early returns are any indication Core has been a success – and not just with your everyday health freaks.

Cellar Restaurant to join health craze

TUCSON, Ariz. – In the four years since I first arrived on the University of Arizona’s campus, the health food options have increased tremendously in the school’s student unions.

The next two weeks’ blogs will take a look at Core and IQ Fresh, the healthiest places to eat on campus, but first some breaking news.

While talking to David Galbraith, the Assistant Director of Arizona Student Unions, about new salad restaurant Core, he informed me that the Cellar Restaurant will likely be changed next year.

“The Cellar has run its course,” Galbraith said. “It kind of came over from the old building. It’s really struggled since day one in this building.”

The plan goes for the Cellar to be redone over the summer, possibly becoming something like a hot-food version of Core because its venue cannot cook hot food. Galbraith spoke of the need for more healthy entrees and hot food in the Union, which will likely become the new Cellar’s purpose.

Although I won’t be here anyways next year, having spent my first three years living on campus I came to love the Cellar for its late hours and delicious albeit unhealthy food. Being a night owl I always knew I could grab a burger or chicken fingers at this classic college joint.

But as Galbraith pointed out all the health food education in high school and middle school is leading to a healthier Union as students arrive on campus and urge officials like Galbraith for healthier food.

“It’s smart for us to listen to the students and as quickly as possibly deliver what they’re looking for,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing here.”

Galbraith said burgers would stay because people like myself love them, but the Union plans on going to grass-fed anti-biotic-free beef to at least fit the healthy mold.

They are still in the process of picking entrees, but those could include salmon, white fish, range-free chicken and a gluten-free vegetable section. There may also be side dishes such as cucumber salads, fruits, pasta and an array of vegetables.

That’s the kind of food that’s healthier than what I normally eat but would be attractive enough for me to make a staple of my diet if I were a freshman in the dorms all over again next year.

The idea will be for patrons to pick their entrees, sit down and have the staff bring them their food. They are currently working on taste testing these potential menu items.

Galbraith added that entrée items at Cactus Grill also “definitely need to change” when possible.

Subtle changes to the Union like these are being made all the time. Galbraith said the Union now offers gluten-free pasta and sauce at 3 Cheeses & a Noodle and gluten-free bread at On Deck Deli, which did not exist a year ago.

He also said to-go food looks much different than the unhealthy fare offered as early as my freshman year.

“I would say we’ve made a lot of progress,” Galbraith said.

And the microbiotic-eating Phoenix Sun is ….

LOS ANGELES – I apologize to my steadily-building readership base who may have been left in suspense for the past week trying to figure out which one of Shaq’s new teammates on the Phoenix Suns visited M Café during a recent road trip.

The hint is the Suns better hope the healthy food he eats keeps him off the disabled list, because Phoenix will need forward Grant Hill quite a bit the rest of the year at the small forward spot with versatile forward Shawn Marion now in Miami.

The reason Hill made it a point to visit M Café during the Suns’ recent trip is because it’s one of the few macrobiotic restaurants in the nation, according to Bill Disselhorst, its director of operations.

With its location in Los Angeles, Disselhorst said M Café is a regular destination for celebrities who want to eat healthy, but the one celeb he named just happens to play for the team I’ve followed since I first got into sports back when I was 7 years old.

The menu Hill saw at M Café includes salads, rice bowls, hot sandwiches, burgers, panini, deli combinations, organic fries, sushi and pastries. The prices range from a simple $8.45 mixed baby greens salad to a $15.45 fish teriyaki bowl, so the prices are manageable in comparison to most food in LA.

Although a carnivore like myself would not find anything I typically eat, some of the sandwiches include seitan, which contains protein but is made from wheat gluten and is used as a substitute for meat in some of their vegetarian dishes.

Disselhorst said the restaurant receives “tremendous feedback” from loyal customers who eat there for health reasons, including a man who has cancer who eats at the restaurant because he believes it helps him get better.

The restaurant director told me a story of a woman named Mina Dobic who went to a doctor about 20 years ago when she had ovarian cancer only to be told she has two months to live.

“I can’t do anything for you, there’s nothing I can do for you,” Disselhorst said the doctor told her.

So Dobic went on a strict macrobiotic diet, Disselhorst said, repeating the word “strict” four times for emphasis, and six and a half months later she became cured of her cancer.Now Dobic consults with celebrities and average people around the world to teach them how to eat better through her Web site.

Her site suggests eating whole grains daily – such as short-, medium- and long-grain brown rice, barley, pearl barley, millet, whole-wheat berries, corn on the cob and buckwheat.

For snacks and on special occasions people should eat buckwheat noodles (soba), whole-wheat noodles (udon), wheat noodles (somen), whole-wheat pasta, whole-wheat bread, whole-rye bread and wheat gluten.

People should occasionally – meaning once or twice a week – eat sweet-brown rice, mochi, cracked wheat, rolled oats, steel-cut oats, corn grits, corn meal, rye flakes, couscous, amaranth and quinoa.

Then foods that should be eaten only infrequently as snacks are muffins, crackers, cookies, pancakes, rice cakes, chips, baked pastries, popcorn and puffed whole-grain cereals.

It’s interesting that a microbiotic diet would include snacks to be eaten infrequently that I eat fairly frequently, whereas the types of whole grains to be eaten daily are generally neglected from my diet.

I’m never going to eat a full-fledged microbiotic diet, but it would be wise to incorporate more healthy grains into my meals.

After all, I could follow a worse person’s lead in terms of eating healthy than Grant Hill.

Microbiotic eating in LA

LOS ANGELES – One can only do so much eating green in Tucson.

So I caught a flight out to LA this last week to check out the eating green scene in the City of Angels (that and I covered the Arizona men’s basketball team’s road trip at USC and No. 5 UCLA for the Arizona Daily Wildcat.)

My cousin who lives in LA told me to check out M Café de Chaya, a restaurant that does not serve meat and as I later found out dairy either.

I caught up with the restaurant’s director of operations Bill Disselhorst, who stopped me from taking pictures in his place after a few clicks, and he explained that M Café features contemporary macrobiotic cuisine.

That means food should be eaten according to the season and climate where you’re located, so you wouldn’t be eating strawberries in the dead of winter in Chicago. That’s why the restaurant offers some salads that change with the seasons along with year-round entrees.

“They believe that people stay healthy when you eat according to seasons,” Disselhorst said.

The second aspect of eating a macrobiotic diet involves not using any dairy products, he said, or anything dependent on animals. M Café offers fish but does not sell anything with milk, butter, meat, chicken or white sugar.

There’s also no processed food or anything with preservatives on the menu, as most of it is organic and natural.

The reason behind that is people who eat a
macrobiotic diet believe humans should consume
grains as 60 percent of their diet, as that’s how it was before the Industrial Revolution.

“You’re going to be healthy because your cholesterol’s going to be low, there’s fiber in the whole grain, basically it pulls everything down, takes care of your blood really, really well,” Disselhorst said.

Macrobiotic eaters also talk about the yin and the yang of food, which needs to stay in balance for optimal health.

For example, Disselhorst explained, if a man eats a big streak, he’s consumed a lot of yang, so he wants to counterbalance that by eating a sweet dessert.

“What we’re trying to here is serve food that’s in balance so you’re not getting too much of one thing, too little of another, so when you eat you stay very well balanced,” Disselhorst said.

For more on macrobiotic eating, check out the Macrobiotic Guide, the Kushi Institute and Macrobiotics Cooking for some good recipes.

Check back with this blog next week for more on macrobiotic eating at M Café, as well as to find out which Phoenix Suns player stopped by the restaurant during a recent road trip.