Student faces obstacles in following organic diet on campus Sensation Line Fitness

Student faces obstacles in following organic diet on campus

October 15th, 2010 Kaitlyn Eames Leave a comment Go to comments

but Alexa Koch, a freshman nutrition major, would rather not eat there. Koch only eats organic food, something the dining halls don’t offer. instead, she has to cook her own food in a communal kitchen.

“We don’t have an only-organics menu,” said Pam Edwards, the assistant director of Housing Dining Service.

Edwards said that if there was a student that had an organic diet, she could go through a process with the Housing Contracts Office and reasons for that diet would be discussed with that student.

Koch just wanted to be sure that she had a place where she could make her own meals.

There are three dining halls that have kitchens open to resident use, Edwards said. The first is Husker Residence Hall, where students do not have meal plans and meals are made on individual time. The second is love Memorial Co-op, which has a collective kitchen. Selleck Quadrangle, where Koch lives, has two student kitchens: one for undergraduate students and the other for graduate students.

Doug Zatechka, director of Housing, said the kitchens are there so students are able to cook for themselves when staying at Selleck over school breaks. all they have to do is check out a key at the front desk.

in order to be in a residence hall where she could cook, Koch had to apply for a room accommodation through the Services for Students with Disabilities. She had to have her doctor fax information saying she needed the accommodation for allergies.

Even after this process, Koch was still uncertain where she would end up living, like most students who wait for their room assignment.

She was assigned to Selleck.

to make her meals, Koch does not find her food at regular grocery stores like Hy-Vee. She shops at whole foods stores including Akin’s Natural Foods Market and visits farmers markets to find some of her food.

“Farmers markets aren’t necessarily organic, but if you know your farmer and you know their farming practices, then you know where it’s coming from,” Koch said.

Koch follows no official definition of “organic” in her diet. She just tries to eat whatever is made with the least amount of chemicals, the least altered or containing the least amount of pesticides.

Most foods are mass produced in many ways. Synthetic pesticides are used with produce, and many processed and packaged foods have heavy preservatives added to conserve flavor, taste and shelf life. Koch especially has a problem with irradiated beef (beef exposed to radiation to kill microorganisms), milk pasteurization (a thermal process to kill bacteria) and homogenization (a process that distributes fat molecules more evenly and can be used to reduce the fat in milk), feedlot cattle and farm-raised fish injected with dyes.

when she was younger, Koch had allergic reactions to synthetic fragrances in shampoos and lotions, so she cut them out of her life. Koch’s mom, who had always been “a natural eater,” took it a step further by extending the no-artificial chemical rule to the food the family ate.

“Eating organic food made more sense,” said Koch. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me why we keep eating the way Americans do.”

but Koch admits she is not perfect when it comes to her diet. if her food goes bad, then she eats in the dining halls, even though there is the chance that the foods she eats will upset her stomach.

Koch credits her pursuit of eating healthier and studying nutrition to her mom. by researching her daughter’s intolerance to synthesized fragrances and extending that notion to the food that she prepared, her mom opened Koch’s eyes.

“That’s what kind of snowballed into (the) effect of, ‘Well, why are we eating this kind of food if it isn’t good for us?” Koch said.

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