2018-03-30

              Opinions about on-campus dining services at Illinois Wes­leyan are certainly mixed.
In an effort to more effective­ly gauge the opinions of Illinois Wesleyan students regarding the on-campus dining services by Sodexo, The Argus circulat­ed a survey.
Rather than email, the sur­vey was spread through Illinois Wesleyan student groups on so­cial media.
Questions focused on the quality and nutritional value of the food, how dietary restric­tions are being met, students’ perceptions of the environmen­tal sustainability of Sodexo, as well as opinion questions like which location is the best on campus.
The survey got 119 respons­es from students, a little under seven percent of the 1,771 stu­dents that attend IWU.
Student representation was relatively equal among grades, with 31.9 percent of responses coming from seniors, 20.2 per­cent from juniors, 26.9 percent from sophomores and 21 per­cent from freshmen.
Responses expectedly ranged from praise of Sodexo as a whole to scathing reviews of past bad experiences.
The freshness and quality of the food were the most cited reasons for negative reviews. Of the 119 responses, 58 stu­dents, or 48.7 percent, men­tioned freshness or quality as an area for improvement.
When asked to rank quality and freshness on a scale of one to 10, students gave an average score of 4.45.
“Even the healthy options such as salads do not seem fresh and are often frozen for awhile,” one student said.
Some of the most common reasons cited for lower scores were the use of less-than-fresh ingredients.
“It is as fresh as they can get it, but I’m sure more local food could be utilized which would increase this score,” one student suggested.
To avoid freshness issues, one student who works for So­dexo pointed out that the com­pany has a policy for how long food may be used.
“Once food has been cooked, leftovers can be stored and used in new dishes for 3 days only,” the student said.
Though most graded the food below a five, 36.1 percent of students gave the quality and freshness of Sodexo food as a six or above, with no one as­signing a perfect 10.
“This year I’ve noticed a marked improvement from last year. I’ve noticed more fresh fruit and steamed vegetables rather than microwaved,” said one student who gave the food a six out of 10.
Several other students men­tioned having noticed an im­provement from years past, also citing an increased availability of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Other students, still, brought up things like seeing mold in the salad bar, and three separate responses reported finding bugs in food.
“I find the lettuce and other veggies too sketchy from too many instances of bugs and mold. I generally stay away,” one student said, talking about the health of his/her diet.
Other students agreed that they do not believe they are eat­ing healthily enough while on campus.
When asked to rank the health of their diet on a one to 10 scale, students gave an aver­age score of 4.6.
“The options of healthy food are slim to none, even when they say a food is healthy you can’t be sure because the qual­ity of produce and meats used are poor,” said a student who ranked their diet as a three out of 10.
Most students echoed this sentiment and said essentially that healthy food is available on a daily basis, but there is either not enough variety in this food or the poor quality of the ingre­dients negates any benefits that there might be.
“There aren’t healthy op­tions available unless you want a salad or wrap every day,” said another student.
Variety was also an issue for students with dietary restric­tions, such as a gluten-free diet, vegetarian/vegan diet, food al­lergies and even student-ath­letes.
“I used to be a vegetarian, and it was a little frustrating to only have one option where meat eaters would have mul­tiple. Plus, vegetarian foods like tofu were never seasoned well,” one student said regard­ing if dietary restrictions are be­ing met.
The root of most complaints about Sodexo was the quality of the ingredients.
Of the 119 responses to the survey, 61.3 percent claimed that the food has at some point made them feel sick.
“Certain foods are good, but others make me sick or are not fresh at all,” a student said. Students by and large do not believe that this has much to do with the staff or how the food is being cooked though.
“The fruit and veggies sup­plied are rarely in good quality and the other foods served hold little nutritional value,” a stu­dent said.
When asked to rank the sani­Survey
says: Sodexo services, a mixed bag
Volume 124 | Issue 19 www.iwuargus.com | twitter: @THEARGUSIWU March 30, 2018ARGUStheARGUSthe
SEE SODEXO SERVICES P. 2
MATT WEGH MANAGING EDITOR