Guide to Pitt dining halls for students with dietary restrictions

For many students leaving home for the first time, eating at the dining hall is one of the most daunting challenges — particularly those with dietary restrictions who need to learn where to find food that’s safe for them. 

Pitt’s dining halls offer students with allergies options both at the Eatery and at the Perch, including a number of vegan and vegetarian options. The University recently expanded the vegan and vegetarian options at the allergen-free station, but some students feel the options for those with dietary restrictions are inadequate.

Because the dining halls serve thousands of students per day, the number of possible dietary restrictions is “pretty limitless” according to Lindsay Wilson, a registered dietitian with Pitt Eats Dining.

On top of considering the overall nutrition, they take into account some of the most common dietary restrictions when planning the menu for dining halls. From a medical standpoint, that means considering food allergies and Celiac disease. They also accommodate preferences for plant-based diets and religious dietary restrictions, like kosher and halal.

Wilson said they try to accommodate the different ways students manage their diets with allergies. 

“We try to provide different ways for students to manage their diet based off of what they feel comfortable with,” Wilson said. “That can range from providing them with resources and information so that they can make more informed dining decisions from just any of the general serving lines to providing a specific station where they can get food that’s a little more self-controlled.”

Colleen Kilpatrick, a sophomore neuroscience major with Celiac disease, said she had a rough time finding gluten-free options in the dining hall.

“I had to figure that out on my own, and I was a bit confused for the first few weeks,” Kilpatrick said.

The Eatery and The Perch

Students who are more concerned about cross-contact can go to Flourish, which is the allergen-free station in the Eatery. It has a separate kitchen from the rest of the stations in the dining hall and the staff who work there receive extra training for how to manage allergens.

“We plan out the menu very specifically just for that station,” Wilson said. “We’re able to then review inventory items much more closely to check if there is any sort of presence of gluten or allergens within them. I audit that menu every single week within our system … just eyeballing and cross-checking and referencing product labels making sure nothing slips through the cracks.”

The online menu for the dining hall includes nutritional information about individual food items. There’s an icon labeling system, where vegan or vegetarian options are indicated by a ‘V’ or ‘VG’. The symbol ‘AG’ stands for ‘avoiding gluten,’ meaning that the item is made without gluten, though there is a potential risk for cross-contamination due to being prepared in the communal kitchen.

After receiving feedback from students asking for more vegan or vegetarian options, Flourish changed how they structure the meals they serve, which were usually a traditional meal of meat, a starch and a non-starchy vegetable. Now, the station operates based on a “build your own bowl” concept offering a variety of both meat and plant-based options.

“It is tricky with a station like that because it is top nine allergen friendly, meaning that we don’t do soy, we don’t do wheat, things that are very common in plant-based protein, so we had to get a little more creative from a nutritional and culinary perspective of what we provided,” Wilson said.

Kilpatrick said her biggest problem with the dining halls is a lack of clear labeling. 

“I didn’t know if things were gluten-free because the sign they have is ‘wheat-free,’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean gluten-free because things can contain gluten that don’t contain wheat,” Kilpatrick said. “I didn’t have any clear things that said ‘this is not cross-contaminated with gluten.’”

Kilpatrick said that she “felt hungry a lot of the time” because she was “scared to eat in the dining hall sometimes.” 

“Flourish for the most part [was safe], but then toward the end of the year I saw a sign that said cross-contamination was possible,” Kilpatrick said. “I can handle cross-contamination, but other people can’t, so it might not be the best option for someone who is sensitive to cross-contamination or someone with severe allergies.” 

Sophomore neuroscience and sociology major Anuj Peri is vegetarian, and he found that vegetarian options were not consistently in the dining halls.

“There were some days where I couldn’t eat anything in the dining hall because there was so much meat, so I had to resort to pasta,” Peri said. “However, there were other days where the options were plentiful.”

Students looking for Halal options can find them in the Eatery, whereas Kosher foods are not available strictly within the dining hall.

“We do purchase Halal-certified meats,” Wilson said.“With our current operations that we have on campus, we don’t have the ability to handle and prepare kosher foods as part of the general food service operation just because of the strict laws that are in place. So what we’ve done instead is we’ve partnered with a local company here within Pittsburgh called Elegant Edge catering and they are kosher certified.”

Currently, they are working to add allergen-friendly desserts at Flourish and dispensers for alternative milks, including oat milk and chocolate pea milk.

Alternate Options

Wilson mentioned she and the dietician through student health are available to meet with students for free to help with more specific diets.

“To some extent, it does fall on the student to be able to look at what their individual needs and preferences are, and then utilize the resources that we make available to them to help manage their diet,” Wilson said.

Wilson said that the university is always looking to improve the options available to students and “trying to look and see where we are missing allergen-friendly options where we can add things to existing menus to make things more accessible to our students.” 

Though Kilpatrick personally struggled with a lack of gluten-free options in the dining hall, she recognized progress being made to accommodate dietary needs.

“I think they are improving, but I don’t think they are where they need to be,” Kilpatrick said. “They are making the right steps and need to keep making those steps.”