Dietary Requirements on Campus: A Very Serious Investigation

Kambri is currently facing many issues and is a complex space for us all. Observer is here to talk about its biggest challenge yet: not having enough veggie options!

All jokes aside, the range of food available on campus is admittedly disappointing, especially for students and staff who are vegetarian, vegan, halal, gluten-free and coeliac. And while food on campus is expensive for everyone, it is particularly wallet-emptying for students with dietary restrictions. 

In a quest to audit what options are available for those with dietary requirements, Observer first spoke to Rex cafe, which has no gluten-free/coeliac options, and extremely limited vegetarian, vegan and halal food options. They do, however, have alternative milk options, although frequent rex go-ers know that oat milk runs out quickly (a travesty). 

Similarly, Ballistic Burritos do not offer coeliac options and only offer a cauliflower and broccoli mix as the vegetarian option. Vegetarian and picky-eater student, Rosie, said this was not enough to incentivise her to buy her lunch there. 

“While Ballistic Burritos is relatively affordable, the cauli and broccoli mixture is not an appetising meat replacement for me.”  

Other options for students who are vegetarian or vegan include Milligram and What the Pho which both offer a variety of vegetarian and vegan meals, mostly based around tofu as the protein option. While the price varies, none of these options could be classified as affordable unless you want to eat a single spring roll for lunch.

For students with coeliac disease, which requires no contact with gluten whatsoever, on-campus food options are considerably more limited and more expensive. Scott, a coeliac student and owner of a victim complex, believes that buying food on campus is out of the question for him. 

“The only coeliac options I’m aware of are the Yori fusion poke bowls and the Vietnamese place on Joplin, and even then I’m not gonna be able to get anything decent for less than 20 bucks.”

“Sure there’s gluten-free options, but it seems that most places don’t really understand what being coeliac-friendly really is.”

However, all hope for coeliac students may not be lost, with Coffee Lab ‘Lab’ telling Observer they adhere to strict rules to offer coeliac options. Lab uses separate toasters for gluten-free bread and replaces the baking paper every time they toast a gluten-free pastry or sandwich. Although, it is worth noting that using gluten-free bread for any Lab sandwich or toast based meal adds an extra $2, a small price to pay for making being gluten-free your personality trait. 

For halal students, Kebaba offers the most options, including a variety of halal snack packs. However, the price of these options do range from $13.50 to $17.50, perhaps not the most affordable or healthy option, as much as a snack pack does hit the spot. 

Criticisms of the lack of food options on campus seem concentrated within Kambri businesses and ANU campus cafes, since on campus catered residences accommodate for all dietary requirements, doing the absolute bare minimum successfully. Gluten-free student Zoe describes her experience eating at on-campus residence Bruce Hall as quite positive – which might just be the only compliment Chartwells has ever received.

“You just have to let them know and they’ll give you an option, and the quality of the food is pretty good by gluten-free standards.”

The consensus amongst students with dietary restrictions seems to be that while options on campus may exist, their prices make them inaccessible. This makes it hard to utilise on-campus businesses as a reliable source for a quality meal. As a vegetarian and professional brokie, this reporter simply sticks to a bag of chips from Daily Mart and calls it a day, or brings food from home. It would definitely be a vast improvement for campus to include more options for people with dietary restrictions. 

While there are no statistics to prove this, this reporter suspects that ANU has a higher population of vegans than most universities (they all live at B&G), however, most of our food options are way behind the times. This is clear cognitive dissonance from ANU businesses. We can do better!

Written by: Evie McEachern

Graphics by: Annisa Zatalini

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