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Mindful
Eating at Smith
Those who are discerning
about what they consume have several options to assist their
selections, including a series of Mindful Eating and Nutrition
workshops, on March 7, 21, and 28, each at 12:15 p.m. in
the King-Scales dining room. “You Are How
you EAT” invites all students who care about food to remove
to a quiet room for a guided session of meditative munching—led
by Hayat Abuza, interfaith program coordinator, and Ryumon
Baldoquin, Zen priest and teacher.
Meanwhile, Lily Samuels ’11
writes about another way to practice mindful eating.
By Lily Samuels ’11
Want
to know the fat content of the bean spread and pesto wrap
at Chapin? What about the amount of sodium in the pickle
spears at Lamont?
 All that information and more
is now just a click away, through a new online on the Web site.
Menus at each dining
hall are broken down by item, and students—or anyone dining
at Smith—can access
calorie content and other nutritional values. Through the
feature, diners can create meal plans, filter searches for
food allergies, and even select preferences such as “vegan” and “vegetarian.”
The Nutritional Information
feature is designed to cater to two needs: food allergy control
and informed consumption, explained Kathy Zieja, director
of dining services.
“Through an explanation of ingredients in our recipes, we would like to address
the eight most common allergens in food: peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, soy, milk,
eggs, fish and shellfish,” she said. “Plus, students are good consumers, and
many of them want to eat healthily. For these students, the nutrition information
can be used as a guide to understand the calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat,
and key vitamins/minerals that may be in a product.”
The feature is intended to give
students more control over their eating habits— whatever
they may be—and not to advocate dieting, said Zieja. “Our intention is not to
have it be used for dieting purposes but to seek balance in what students are
eating.”
In the works since last year,
the Nutritional Information feature is a response to students
who have voiced a desire for the ability to make more informed
choices about their daily dining. “It’s a feature that we have wanted to offer for a
while,” noted Zieja. “Students on our Dining Committee have requested this information
over the past few years. So we set a goal and secured funding.”
Students
will soon be able to view dining menus on-the-go. In a collaboration
among personnel in college relations, dining services and
ITS, an iPhone application for Smith dining menus has been
created and will soon be released internally for beta testing.
Bill Weakley, an apps developer in ITS and the cining app’s creator, predicts that it will be officially available in
the app store by mid-March. For now, the app only includes the menus at each
dining hall, but Weakley hopes to see the Nutritional Information feature added
sometime in the near future. |
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