Most Penn State college students are fortunate sufficient to not fear about what sort of meals they’re going to eat for his or her subsequent meal. However for others, that isn’t the case.
College Park homes over 40,000 undergraduate college students, all using the eating corridor sooner or later all through their 4 years. However what about college students with particular allergy lodging? How does Penn State eating guarantee they’ll get the meals they want safely?
Penn State’s registered dietitian, Katy Petrosky, is essential to serving to handle meals providers for college students with allergic reactions and different dietary wants.
Petrosky has served as Penn State’s registered dietitian since April 2019. She obtained her bachelor’s diploma in advertising and marketing from Penn State and her grasp’s diploma in allied drugs and medical dietetics from Ohio State.
Previous to her present function at Penn State, Petrosky was the meals service director at J.C. Blair Memorial Hospital in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, for 9 years.
Making ready meals for 1000’s of scholars on daily basis is difficult sufficient, however Petrosky and the remainder of the eating corridor crew work extraordinarily arduous to accommodate these with allergic reactions. She says communication is essential to constructing relationships with college students, even earlier than they step foot on campus for his or her freshman yr.
“We attempt to meet college students the place they’re. If people want to have the ability to see the components and allergens to navigate safely, we allow them to know how you can entry that info,” Petrosky mentioned. “If college students need to have their meals ready safely within the again, we’ll present them with our order kind to rearrange that.”
Petrosky mentioned the kitchen at present has about 450 first-year college students who’ve disclosed a meals allergy. The quantity goes over 1,000 for first via fourth and even fifth-year college students, however a majority of them will self-navigate as they become old, leaving Petrosky with a a lot smaller quantity to work with.
Though college students report quite a lot of completely different allergic reactions, the most typical ones Petrosky sees are peanuts, tree nuts, wheat or gluten, and dairy. Nonetheless, having to accommodate all kinds of allergic reactions could make it difficult to make sure that there is no such thing as a cross-contamination inside the kitchen.
“Cross-contact prevention will get very tough in self-service areas, so that is an space the place college students with meals allergic reactions want to make use of additional warning and request meals from the again or backup pans as a substitute of risking cross-contact in these areas,” Petrosky defined.
To create these backup pans, the eating corridor cooks have a course of they need to comply with.
First, they take a look at insurance policies that inform them what recipes they’re allowed to make use of. These recipes are carefully adopted, and knowledge on components and allergens is displayed on a menu for them to work with. The culinary crew and administration crew work hand-in-hand all through the whole course of to make sure that every particular person pupil’s lodging are met.
Petrosky and the remainder of the crew attempt to have as many allergy-friendly choices on their each day menus, nevertheless, it may grow to be fairly demanding, which is why college students can put in particular requests for objects corresponding to gluten-free pasta or a bagel with dairy-free cream cheese.
Petrosky takes delight in ensuring each pupil safely will get the meals they want on daily basis.
College students who’ve any questions or assume they may want any help can electronic mail [email protected]. You can even go to the allergic reactions and particular diets webpage for extra info.
