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Purple Media Network

The Official Student Media of Northwestern State University of Louisiana

Purple Media Network

Purple Media Network

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Sodexo at NSU responds to ‘F’ grade

Sodexo+at+NSU+responds+to+F+grade

After being reviewed by a website called “Is It Bad for You?” the quality of Sodexo’s food has come into question.

“The claims that the reviewer made are simply not true,” General Manager of Sodexo at NSU Steve Kauf said. “To claim that we use horse meat in our burgers is absurd.”

Is It Bad for You is run by a team of web developers, body builders, nutritionists, bloggers and doctors who claim to be committed to providing information that the website’s visitors can use to improve their health.

The Current Sauce recently emailed the Is It Bad for You staff to inquire about their claims; we have not yet received a response, but we will update the online article if we receive a reply or discover new information.

“The website is essentially a blog,” Kauf said. “A lot of what was said in the article is not backed up by science or is completely impossible with the government’s strict food guidelines.”

The U.S. government regulates what food services, including Sodexo, can serve and provides guidelines for the food’s nutritional value.

“It’s not possible for us to serve non-nutritional food,” Kauf said.

The article on Is It Bad for You mentioned that children whose school lunches are provided by Sodexo often complain they are not given enough to eat. The portion sizes, however, are regulated by the government and conform to the FDA’s nutritional standards.

Most NSU students who have complained about the food on campus are concerned about the quality of the food.

“The food has oscillated between questionable and inedible, and the only times I’ve seen brief improvements is when people who don’t attend this university visit and eat here,” junior Ashleigh Pope said. “There are few to no genuinely healthy options.”

Like students described in the Is It Bad for You article, NSU students have noticed that food from previous meals is sometimes used again; for some, this is off-putting.

“Sometimes we use leftovers just like you do at home,” Kauf said. “The leftovers aren’t meant to stand alone though; they’re always included as something extra. They won’t be served as the only option for that particular meal.”

NSU students have also raised concerns about the limited number of options that are available at each meal.

“We have discussed adding new options at food committee meetings,” Kauf said. “The thing is, we would have to remove an item to add something else because space is limited. We can’t please everyone every single day, but the variety is out there.”

The article from Is It Bad for You claims that eating food from Sodexo can lead to obesity, hypertension and heart disease.

“That could potentially be true if a student typically eats two or three burgers and a pile of fries at every meal,” Kauf said. “The thing about articles like this is that there’s always a little kernel of truth in them, but they’re usually not as true as they could be. Of course, some of the items that we serve are healthier than others, but that isn’t a reflection of the service or food quality.”

Sodexo plans to upgrade their facilities at NSU, but the proposed changes are not a reaction to the review.

“We plan to upgrade the Green Corner,” Kauf said. “We want to put more items on there so that students can get full meals from there instead of mostly sides.”

There are also plans to put grab-and-go stands with sandwiches and snacks in some of the buildings around campus so that students won’t have to walk across campus to purchase food.

Steve Kauf encourages students to come directly to Sodexo with complaints, concerns and suggestions in the meantime.

“The more people come and tell us what they do and don’t like, the better we get,” he said. “We need specific details so we know what to improve.”

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