College Diet

As students return for another semester at community college, they might be surprised by the lack of fried and fatty foods in the cafeteria. Folsom Lake College is changing its diet.

Just one semester ago, the cafeteria was a quarter of the size and offered greasy pizza and a few burger or sandwich choices. Now, eating on campus is a whole new experience.

Instead of pre-made pizza, students can choose their own toppings. Instead of hamburgers, students are offered a choice of fresh meats and vegetables sautéed right in front of them. And don’t forget the lettuce wraps offered in the sandwich section. Next semester the dessert section gets the chopping block. Goodbye chocolate cake and hello fruit smoothies.

Folsom Lake College has grown in the last four years from a few mobile units to over 6 buildings. To match this expansion, the old kitchen needed to serve over 8,000 students. A remodel and addition helped to create the look of an executive made-for-order dining experience, complete with new equipment, a sauté section and a professional chef.

“The most popular food for college students is fried food. You can’t stop young people from eating burgers,” Steve Sims said, the new chef manager at Folsom Lake College “It’s my personal charter to try to make all the food nice and fresh and bring in different food concepts like Mediterranean and Italian.”

Sims is the last building block in the complete shift in the cafeteria. Sims brings his culinary training and past experiences as a head chef at a few hotels and restaurants to manage the new kitchen facility, create recipes, train cooks and provide nutritional information for students. Every week one section of the cafeteria offers a certain genre of food, always with a vegetarian and low-fat option. Next week is Mexican, per request of students.

“I think Sims has tapped into a lot of the comments that have been cruising around campus since it opened,” Jessica Hodge said, nutrition professor at Folsom Lake College. “He makes the food fresh, he makes it reasonable and he makes it flexible. It takes a little longer to get things because it is labor intensive work, but the speed at which they produce such healthy choices is excellent.”

Hodge said that she would never eat anything offered at the cafeteria before. Now everything has changed. She will meet colleagues or students there to share a soy-protein lettuce wrap or a fruit bowl.

“This is basically a brand new facility,” Sims said. “And I want to offer all fresh ingredients with a vegetarian, a low-fat and a low-sodium option offered at each of our stations. It’s all about minimizing fats and having different healthy options.”

Sims began offering soy-protein lettuce wraps just last week, and already he said they have become wildly popular. But even the more typical college student fare has changed form.

“Did you take a look at the pizzas? They are unbelievable!” Hodge said. “The pizza guy was so cute. When I was there he was asking me to take one, to take a sample. He was so proud of those pizzas. And he should be. They are healthier and they have a beautiful way of presenting it.”

Sim’s plan is to take what remains of the fatty foods that college students crave and offer a healthier way to eat them. Pizza was the first step, offering fresh vegetables for toppings and minimizing grease.

Before the change, the school was not set up with the necessary equipment to provide innovative dishes, Hodge said. The sauté is Hodge’s favorite piece of equipment. She hopes that she can use it as a part of the cooking lessons in her nutrition classes on campus.

Students are appreciating this innovation with the larger amount of food options and the nutritional value.

“I’m not really a nutritionally sane guy, but I can still taste the difference,” said Bradley King, 31-year-old student. “I eat here every Tuesday and Thursday and for the record, this breakfast burrito is one of the best I’ve had.”

Despite the variety of choices and the increase in healthiness, the prices at the cafeteria have remained reasonable, King said.

There has been no significant increase in the price for food on campus since the cafeteria’s re-birth. But for the typical cash-poor college student, 22-year-old Mike Tripp, reasonable isn’t quite good enough.

“Eating is expensive and when you have the time it’s much less expensive to go off campus with all the choices that we have in Folsom,” Tripp said. “But with this new cafeteria I guess it would be hard to justify leaving campus if the prices were a bit more reasonable.”

Tripp and his friend, T.J. Santoro, both appreciated Folsom Lake College’s additions to the cafeteria.

“It feels like a real school now, and I think that’s the best part,” Santoro said.

Hodge shares Santoro’s excitement and hopes that this means continued changes and growth for Folsom Lake College. She knows how long change takes and was a front-runner in encouraging it.

“Three years ago they started a food service committee of faculty, staff, students and administration. We met and discussed what issues there were, what problems there were and how we could make the food better,” Hodge said. “The committee brought awareness and the thought, ‘Wait a minute, things aren’t good here. We need to change it somehow to make it more exceptional – to make it better.’”

Sims said that the entire Los Rios district of schools is increasing their nutritional efforts.

“This campus is very small, but we are doing as much as anyone else,” Sims said. “And I am looking for ways to increase the healthy options, especially for grab-and-go customers. We want to be really healthy and hope to keep developing that aspect of the cafeteria for Folsom Lake College.”