Nutrition and Dietary Concerns

OSCA works hard to create a friendly and safe dining atmosphere for co-opers with special dietary needs. OSCAns count among their ranks vegans who eat and do not eat honey, vegetarians, and people who can't consume certain nuts, fruits, vegetables, legumes, gluten, wheat, egg, soy, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Co-opers write their names on worksheets posted in the kitchen to indicate their dietary preferences (vegan with/without honey, vegetarian) as well as the foods they are unable to eat due to allergies, intolerance, or other medical conditions. Cooks are required to consult these worksheets and provide adequate food for everyone at meals. Cooks are also supposed to list all the ingredients in the dishes they prepare, and note whether they are vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, etc. However, different co-ops do better at following these guidelines than others, and larger co-ops can have more difficulty accommodating every member.

While many co-opers migrate to certain co-ops based on the food policies those co-ops have historically followed, food policy is decided by each co-op every semester. Harkness has historically served vegan and vegetarian food only. Keep, Pyle, and Tank have served meat a couple times a month in the past. For co-opers with medical conditions that require them to eat a very individualized and precise diet, their own kitchen, Brown Bag Co-op may be a good choice. Brown Bag is a buying co-op where members can purchase their food and cook in their own kitchens. If you would like advice on which co-op might best be able to meet your dietary concerns, email us!

If your nutritional needs are not being accommodated, or just to ensure that they will be, you may want to talk to your co-op cooks, food buyers, nutrition adviser, and/or accessibility coordinators. For example, you might urge your food buyers to buy gluten-free pasta, cereal, gluten-free flours for baking, wheat-free soy sauce, etc. If a cook consistently fails to provide adequate meals for you, you can give them a missed job. However, dialogue is really the most effective tool. If you feel uncomfortable talking to any of these people, your co-op Accessibility Coordinator will do it for you. That's their job. Students with special dietary needs are paying just as much money to the co-op as everyone else, and they deserve to eat! 

Sometimes it is impossible for a specific co-op to accommodate a member's dietary needs. In this event, you may receive priority placement from the wait list to be switched into a more appropriate co-op, if space allows. Members will have to prove their medical need to utilize this method of co-op switching, and people trying to abuse this privilege will not succeed.