Student Reviews

• Allison

  The U of A has mainly a food court, not a dining hall. As a vegan freshman I ate mainly salad and pasta, and struggled to find good combinations of food that did *not* include french fries or bread. Step it up, U of A!

• Caitlin Brenton

  Overall I am not very impressed with the vegan options at the U of A. We do have a core, which is great but the vegan things besides salad are only offered at the Student Union that is not very close to most people’s classes. Also, lots of vegan food is more expensive than the other food they offer. Many restaurants are not good about labeling what is vegan and what is not so that makes it difficult to know what there is to eat. There is lots of fast food here and some of it is vegan, but not healthy at all. I eat similar things everyday and am considering not renewing my meal plan because I feel that I don’t have very many vegan friendly options.

• Mark

  Annoyingly, it seems like almost 1/3 of the food everywhere on campus is labelled as gluten free, yet almost nothing is labelled vegan. It’s particularly frustrating to see shelvs upon shelves of food, with a soggy overpriced pita with microscopic tofu slices and lettuce as the only labelled vegan option… and yet there is inari, which is not labelled as vegan, fruit cups which are not labelled as vegan, and PB&Js, which may not be vegan but should be easy to make vegan. I’m not sure why the gluten free crowd seems to be getting so much love on campus, including from all kinds of restaurants, but vegans are getting very little. I had a similar experience at ASU, where they even had a large section of one of the campus stores dedicated to kosher food, even though there are probably an equal number of vegans and people who keep kosher on that campus. Sucks even more when freshmen are forced to buy a mealplan.

• Alison

  Although the U of A has a lot of vegan options, it’s not necessarily vegan-friendly. While Core is awesome, it is one of the few places on campus that actually labels food (check out the dressing chart, which labels each dressing as dairy free, vegan, gluten free, etc.). At Cactus Grill, the garden vegetable soup was labeled as vegetarian, but when I asked if it was vegan I was told it had a meat base (AKA not even vegetarian). This being said, there are many vegan options, but a good majority of them are unhealthy. As a very health-conscious vegan, I’m not looking to have bread as the main source of calories in my diet, and many food services offer just that. I don’t want to eat a bagel or fries for every meal, and I believe that tofu or tempeh should be incorporated! (Rock on IQ for having tofu as an option) Overall, it is decent, but could use more labeling and variety.