(Photo courtesy of: AllRecipies) “Students want gluten-free pasta, the way there is gluten pasta.”
Morgan Mylon
Connector Staff
Gluten intolerance, otherwise known as celiac disease is a condition that causes your stomach to react when eating gluten, damaging the small intestine. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, and triticale. Gluten acts like a glue, which helps keep the shape of these grains. More brands have provided an alternative such as Oreos, pasta and pizza as awareness on celiac increases. So, why do the UMass Lowell Dining halls and Market have no such options available?
When a student taps into a dining hall there’s only one spot that is guaranteed gluten-free, True Balance. However, there are a variety of problems with True Balance. First is their lack of options, often only serving one protein with potatoes, rice, or quinoa and gluten-free pasta which needs to be boiled when you ask for it, which often causes a line to form. The protein that True Balance serves is often a strange combo or a pot roast being served during 90-degree weather. For picky eaters, this can create conflict with their meals as there’s this strange combo of pasta. Several meals at True Balance often have the appearance of being undercooked or are served with only small portions of protein. There’s also a salad bar with a sign stating it “Strives to be gluten-free”, but serves pasta salad on the regular.
The market tells a similar tale as the dining hall. The market has a section dedicated to “gluten-free” products but over 90% of it is granola and protein bars. If you wander over towards the sandwiches and meals ready to go, there’s only one thing for you to eat, a wrap. The problem with GF wraps is the tortilla often falls apart creating a mess. There’s such a thing as gluten-free bread. It’s just extremely expensive and often forgotten about to save money. If you go to the mac and cheese and ramen section, the only gluten-free options are the boxed mac and cheese and boxed pasta which require the apartment-style dorms or access to a kitchen which most students, especially freshmen do not have. The apartment-style dorms are extremely expensive and inaccessible to students with less money, and the ones with gluten allergies are already spending their extra money on foods they can eat. Often foods that are gluten-free in the market are mixed into the vegan sections or go unlabeled as such. Even the freezer meals have no gluten-free alternatives, and if there are, most require an oven or stovetop.
And then there is Rowdy’s on the fly. There is zero customization of orders or labels on any item. You pick a meal, beverage, and dessert, and that is it. You can’t request no tomatoes or no rice instead of french fries. Desserts have no ingredient breakdown, sometimes the meals have them but are often vague, stating “with a hearty grain blend” or something similar, not stating what’s actually in the “hearty grain blend”. Meals are also not labeled if it is gluten-free or not, which can be extremely dangerous to those with worse celiac disease and physically cannot consume gluten.
Items in the dining hall, markets, and Rowdy’s on the fly, should all be properly labeled for ingredients, and what it may contain, and should have more alternatives than just one or two items that people with celiac eat on rotation.
