By Kevin Kauffman

Fees, unions, directed choice, two-million dollar deficit: these are the buzzwords that have framed the dining debate in recent months. While the issues of creating a self supporting dining program and providing the campus with diverse foods both receive much attention, other pertinent issues in Duke Dining are less broadly discussed. Of these issues, the most troubling is the lack of healthy options available to low income students on a small dining budget.

It is a well-known that Duke students tend to be wealthier than their counterparts at many other institutions. It is almost assumed that everyone on campus is sufficiently affluent to eat well. For most students, it is normal enough to eat out several times a week and to add food points as they run out in the closing weeks of the semester.

There are, though, those students that cannot afford to buy more food points at will and rely on outside dining. The students that are forced to eat their meals on campus and to monitor their food point usage  are also the ones ignored in the current dining model. While most students cannot afford to eat at the Wa-Duke every night, these students’ choices are even more limited as they are forced to accept lower quality and less healthy food choices on campus.

I consider myself an average Duke student. I think I eat well. I eat out about once a week and often spend time off campus with meals on my own tab.  When I am on campus, I do not seek out the most expensive meals, and do try to put some effort into not overspending on food. Each semester I buy the cheapest meal plan at $1,710. Each semester, I overspend this amount by about $200 to $300. At 21 meals a week, this means over the course of a semester (once you take out the 20 or so meals I eat off campus), I can spend about $6.50 per meal on average. Even someone who has an appetite the size of mine, but can’t afford to eat out and acquire additional points, will only have about $5 available per meal. Thus, these students are forced to strictly dictate their meal choices by the price of the items they buy.

In a survey of the dining options on campus, price and quality of the food are definitely positively correlated: the more expensive the item, the healthier it tends to be. This is to be expected though. No one is expecting a sirloin steak and spaghetti to carry the same price tag, but Duke dining should not allow the health-value of food to have such a large range.

For example, a meal at the Great Hall (main dish with 2 sides and a drink) will cost $9 to $10 depending on the particular entrée, well above the allocated $5 dollars.  A meal at Alpine Atrium, a fairly healthy option, will run between $8 and $8.50. Meanwhile, a meal at Chick-fil-a will cost $6 to $6.50 and a Big Mac meal at the campus McDonalds costs $5.09. Of all the meals presented here, only one is remotely close to meeting the average meal cost goal demanded by an affordable university meal plan.

Even within the same restaurant, healthier options tend to be more expensive. A soda at the Great Hall costs $1.19, but a comparable fruit juice costs $1.69. A fried chicken sandwich at Chick-fil-a costs $2.85, but the same sandwich grilled will cost an extra $0.70. The price differential for a salad is even greater, at  $4.85. At McDonalds, the Big Mac is one of the cheapest meals on the menu. While these small increases in price may not seem significant, a few extra dollars per meal is a huge burden for students struggling to stay within their budget.

While the debate rages on about how to close the dining deficit, the dining ‘people’ need to realize this campus needs an eatery where students can regularly eat nutritious meals without spending $9 to $10 each meal. The Great Hall is not a viable option, as its products are drastically overpriced, not to mention generally unappetizing. Another issue with the Great Hall is its lack of service on weekends, which assumes that every student has the means to eat elsewhere for the weekend. Changes need to be made so that every student can eat both healthily and affordably.