For a campus of about 36,000 undergraduate students alone, California State University, Long Beach has a dining setup that heavily ignores its vegan population.
According to Evelyn Garcia, employee at the Bookstore Convenience Store “About three to four students ask per day” for vegan options.
Vegan students at CSULB will find that there are not many places on campus that cater to their specific dietary needs or preferences, especially not when compared to the extensive menus offered to vegetarian students and students who eat meat.
Vegetarian students can be satisfied with either vegan or vegetarian options for meals, but the opposite is not true. Vegans do not avoid eating meat alone; they also abstain from the consumption of any animal by-products.
Despite the fact that there are several restaurants across the CSULB campus, most of them only have exceptions for vegetarian diets. Vegan entrees, on the other hand, need to be created upon request.
Many of the smaller stores on campus do have vegan snacks.
“I mainly rely on The Beach Hut when I had food at school,” said Alexandria Johnson, women’s gender and sexuality studies and practicing vegan. “Their wraps include veggies and vegan protein and are quick and balanced.”
According to the menu posted on the CSULB website, the Grain Bowl is the only dish marked specifically for vegans at the Beach Walk. All the other vegetarian options are offset by something that makes it unfriendly for vegans like the inclusion of cheese or eggs. Most of the other vegan options available on campus are designed to be quick, microwavable entrees, not full and satisfying meals. For example, there are salads at Beach Walk and falafel with hummus at George’s Greek.
However, it is possible to make some of the vegetarian meals vegan upon request if the student asks for the removal of specific ingredients.
“We offer much more when it comes to vegetarian options since we have a larger request for these items,” Kiersten Stickney, the director of marketing and communications of Forty-Niner Shops, said. “However, we will be revamping the menus at our dining locations this summer to introduce more vegan options and also making sure we highlight these items as vegan so customers can recognize them easier.”
As of now, the extensive choices laid out in the residential dining halls are not always equipped to feed vegan students. Often times, the vegetarian options in the dining hall cannot be made vegan, like on days when they serve macaroni and cheese or cheese enchiladas.
“A lot of times, a vegan has to learn how to get creative and start preparing their own food at the dining hall in order to get their full range of nutrients,” said junior and international house resident advisor Madison Robins. “Often times, it’s disconcerting to navigate the dining hall as a vegan because vegan’s prefer to read thoroughly through the ingredient list in case there are hidden animal products, but the dining hall does not provide any ingredients to residents.”
Madison Robins said she thinks it would be beneficial for all students, including vegans, to know what is in the food.
This makes it difficult for vegan students who dorm to find the types of foods they need for each meal, and useless for vegan commuters who pay $8 per meal, as they do not live in the dorms and have a meal plan.
It’s not impossible to be a vegan student at CSULB. There are a few accessible options, and students always have the option to pack their own, vegan-guaranteed meals for class. But until the campus expands their menus so they carry options for students with alternative diets, being vegan just means being a little bit more crafty with meal choices.