Let me start by making it very clear that I have a very narrow spectrum of foods that I actually find acceptable for my consumption. My tastes are highly finicky, and even back home in India, there were very few things I actually ate. The problem arises from my rather baffling preferences- I'm a vegetarian who dislikes vegetables (when they're raw), I only eat specific things when they have been prepared in a specific way, and I simply don't even bother with most of the things.
So yes, I knew beforehand that I would have some problems with my diet here- after all, the United States cuisine is all meat based, with very few purely vegetarian samplings. So I was kind of prepared to be more flexible with my dietary preferences than usual. And initially, when I got here, things seemed to be going well- I'd have fries, veggie burgers, cheese pizzas and grilled cheese sandwiches on campus, and be rather satisfied with what I had (I usually stayed away from Mabee, but when I did go there, it was for the pasta line or for the occasional omelette).
Unfortunately, my diet lacked ANY kind of nutrition, so I was forced to restructure it after some very serious health issues that I ran into in my second semester here- soon, it had expanded to include rice with beans, salads (with dressing- about the only way I could have those vegetables was to consume them with copious amounts of ranch, mayonnaise and mustard), eggs, and more. I didn't like the food, but it was certainly edible, and it was giving me a balanced nutritional input.
The thing is, I know I wasn't being picky. I'd go off campus and eat the same things there, and I'd love what I ate. It was just the preparation of this stuff on campus that really put me off. However, I was okay with it after a while, and my intake went steadily down, so I actually lost a lot of my excess flab, and struck a great equilibrium. I didn't like what I ate, but eating itself wasn't as important to me anymore.
Looks like the higher ups at Trinity don't really want me to eat though- starting my sophomore year, they totally messed Coates up, so I wouldn't have enough money in my meal plan to spend on food from there, and they also changed the timings there... and they also completely changed Mabee so that the few things that I had liked there, weren't sold there anymore.
I'm sure I'll reach some sort of an equilibrium again. I've started eating chicken (only occasionally) after all, and I actually quite like some of the new stuff that Mabee has to offer. But on the whole, on the dietary front, things have been rough for me here. Not only did I have to deal with acclimatizing to an all new cuisine, but I also had to deal with my own obtuse dietary preferences, frequently changing them again and again, and had to deal with the famed horrible preparation that all campus food is inevitably supposed to have.
The long and short of it? Campus food is awful, no matter which part of the world you're in. It's an indisputable truth, an axiom. If the ancient Greeks had started with that, rather than fiddling around with astronomy and trigonometry, I'm sure we would have had flying cars around by now.
So yes, I knew beforehand that I would have some problems with my diet here- after all, the United States cuisine is all meat based, with very few purely vegetarian samplings. So I was kind of prepared to be more flexible with my dietary preferences than usual. And initially, when I got here, things seemed to be going well- I'd have fries, veggie burgers, cheese pizzas and grilled cheese sandwiches on campus, and be rather satisfied with what I had (I usually stayed away from Mabee, but when I did go there, it was for the pasta line or for the occasional omelette).
Unfortunately, my diet lacked ANY kind of nutrition, so I was forced to restructure it after some very serious health issues that I ran into in my second semester here- soon, it had expanded to include rice with beans, salads (with dressing- about the only way I could have those vegetables was to consume them with copious amounts of ranch, mayonnaise and mustard), eggs, and more. I didn't like the food, but it was certainly edible, and it was giving me a balanced nutritional input.
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| I fell in love with Chipotle and their food. Not only did they have a great Vegetarian menu, but it was all also delicious. |
The thing is, I know I wasn't being picky. I'd go off campus and eat the same things there, and I'd love what I ate. It was just the preparation of this stuff on campus that really put me off. However, I was okay with it after a while, and my intake went steadily down, so I actually lost a lot of my excess flab, and struck a great equilibrium. I didn't like what I ate, but eating itself wasn't as important to me anymore.
Looks like the higher ups at Trinity don't really want me to eat though- starting my sophomore year, they totally messed Coates up, so I wouldn't have enough money in my meal plan to spend on food from there, and they also changed the timings there... and they also completely changed Mabee so that the few things that I had liked there, weren't sold there anymore.
I'm sure I'll reach some sort of an equilibrium again. I've started eating chicken (only occasionally) after all, and I actually quite like some of the new stuff that Mabee has to offer. But on the whole, on the dietary front, things have been rough for me here. Not only did I have to deal with acclimatizing to an all new cuisine, but I also had to deal with my own obtuse dietary preferences, frequently changing them again and again, and had to deal with the famed horrible preparation that all campus food is inevitably supposed to have.
The long and short of it? Campus food is awful, no matter which part of the world you're in. It's an indisputable truth, an axiom. If the ancient Greeks had started with that, rather than fiddling around with astronomy and trigonometry, I'm sure we would have had flying cars around by now.
Chipotle Burrito Bowl by Mr T in DC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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