The Ebbtide 42/2/Lunchtime at Shoreline a no-brainer

Lunchtime at Shoreline a no-brainer

by Ivanhoe, Staff Writer

  Eat­ing well is as im­port­ant for the brain as it is for the fig­ure. What you eat af­fects your at­ten­tion span, your con­cen­tra­tion, and your abil­ity to re­mem­ber in­forma­tion. Be­liev­ing this to be true, I find the food situ­a­tion on campus ap­pal­ling. In the wake of the PUB’s clo­sure, the vast ma­jor­ity of the campus’s food op­tions are junk.

  The situ­a­tion is espe­cially bad for veg­et­ari­ans like me. Unless you are on a strictly chips-and-candy diet, the op­tions are ex­tremely lim­ited.

  The mod­est veg­et­arian sand­wich at the Whid­bey’s Coffee loca­tion in the 2200 build­ing is not worth the $6 ask­ing price, though they often have a veg­et­arian soup op­tion for a little over $3.25 a cup. The five-dollar veggie dog at Dante’s In­ferno Dogs is cooked on the same warm-plate as the meat­ier op­tions, and may be stretch­ing the defin­i­tion of healthy.

  The best deal I have found on campus is a micro­wave­able bean bur­rito sold at the SCC book­store for $2.95. It isn’t much, but it is at least mod­estly heal­thy and reason­ably priced. Watch out for their seem­ingly veg­et­arian-friendly noodle soups, which all con­tain beef stock. The Student Lounge al­leg­edly has a few veg­et­arian op­tions in their vend­ing ma­chines, but they are so hard to find among the pre­vail­ing meat- and/or sugar-laden of­fer­ings that it is almost not worth the trouble of search­ing. The vend­ing ma­chines of­fer a garden salad, a “Cal­if­or­nia veg­et­able” soup, yogurt, cereal, cot­tage cheese, a pack­age of car­rots and broc­coli, and a wedge of bread and cheese, all ran­ging in price from $1.00 to $3.00.

  If at all pos­sible, I would sug­gest tak­ing the shut­tle to Cen­tral Mar­ket, where you can get far better food. Their salad bar is a little pricey, but deli­cious and full of heal­thy op­tions. For those on a bud­get, Central car­ries many Amy’s brand pro­ducts in their fro­zen aisle that are all veg­et­arian and fre­quently vegan and or­ganic. The Stu­dent Lounge has micro­waves and hot water.

  Sadly, the se­lec­tion of good on-campus food doesn’t widen much if you are not a veg­et­arian.

  While I under­stand how dif­fi­cult it is for the school to pro­vide food ser­vices to stu­dents with­out the ex­ist­ence of a cafe­teria, it does not ap­pear that much con­sider­a­tion was given to the na­ture of the food being served. If the school wants to show that they genu­inely care about stu­dents’ edu­ca­tion, then they should pro­vide food that pro­motes a heal­thy brain that is ready to learn.

  I hope the school will keep this in mind as they de­cide what form the cafe­teria should take when the PUB re-opens.