So I'm sitting in the campus center - just having walked in past the surging mass of Tufts students taking advantage of the desperate bids of Domino's, Papa John's, Pranzi's, Pizza Days and Boloco to get on the meal plan.
Despite having skipped breakfast, I wasn't among the hungry kids who gratefully shoveled pizza into their faces.
NOPE! Y'all are lucky, because this girl right here couldn't eat a single thing that those competing food establishments of Boston Ave had to offer.
Yeah, um, I can't eat wheat. It ... sucks.
As a Tufts student stuck in a gluten-free life, I've always been bothered by a few things about how our dining system works, and this display in the campus center kind of set me off. I'm going to whine now. But I also can't eat bread, so I think I'm allowed to whine.
Deal with it.
Let's start with a quick tour of Tufts dining establishments for people with Celiac Disease or other gluten intolerances.
Dewick has a freezer with some gluten-free breads for making sandwiches. Every day for lunch, there's rice and chili - which I ate every day for lunch for three months until the day I realized that another bowl of rice and chili would make me vomit. Things that shouldn't have gluten in them, like French fries or other potatoes Dewick offers, are often blacklisted, because they use gluten as a thickening agent.
And there's a salad bar, of course, but personally I don't find salad at all filling and usually want another dish to supplement it. So Dewick has some stuff, but it's also a bigger time commitment than just stopping by one of the Points-accepting places around campus. (Note: I've heard Carmichael has more options for gluten-free people, but I'm a downhiller and have yet to check these out).
At the Commons, I can get salad, but even in the sushi, imitation crabmeat and soy sauce have gluten in them. Brown and Brew and the Rez have an amazing selection of pastries and muffins, none of which I can eat.
Oxfam donates hummus to the available gluten-free options on campus. Hotung's fancy paninis are sadly off the table. For dessert, we have ice cream and Rice Krispies. The new Hodgdon offers mashed potatoes and salad. Recently, Jumbo has started stocking some gluten-free stuff, which I really appreciate, but you do have to make it yourself; it's not exactly grab-and-go.
Once upon a time, I'd go to the Commons with my own bread in the morning and ask them to make me an egg-and-cheese sandwich, but now they say it's against their policies. It's pretty bleak, guys.
And when I found in January that the source of my nine-month-long headache was gluten consumption, all those Dining Dollars on my meal plan were suddenly completely useless for ordering out. Things I can order on Points: salads, once again, cheese fries with bacon bits from Espresso's (which do, contrary to popular belief, get old), and maybe some stuff from Wing Works or Panda Palace.
Maybe. They'll randomly put flour into some things, and then I'll have a headache for the rest of the night after eating them. You guys can decide to order food when you have a lot of work to save time; I usually have to spend about an hour every day making dinner and enough for lunch tomorrow.
Time spent grocery shopping and cooking is time spent not studying, and the economics major in me is disgruntled at this opportunity cost. So yeah: For vegans and vegetarians who chose their own dietary restrictions, there's always an option, but for people who gave up gluten because the alternative is pain, the menu is very short.
True, there are a lot less of us, but the number is growing frighteningly, and besides, it's the principle of the thing.
Now, the truth is that I live off-campus now: I have my own kitchen, no meal plan and parents who thankfully provide me with enough money to afford the slightly more expensive gluten-free breads and pastas sold by Whole Foods and, up until recently, Wild Oats. (I'm going to miss that 10% discount on Tuesday for Tufts students.)
But what about kids whose meal plans are paid by financial aid, or freshmen whose meal plans basically consign them to living in Dewick and Carmichael? They have to drift around the dining hall and sigh every time they see the green cards above each dish list "Wheat" under allergens.
I'm not really sure how to fix the problem. It's not like Tufts can just make gluten-free pasta for everyone, since it's a little more expensive, and why spend more money to please a select few? And I'm guessing that making a deal with Whole Foods to accept Dining Dollars is going to happen sometime around never.
But, realizing that yet another Italian place is going to get added to the Points options (because, you know, Andrea's, Espresso's and Pasta Pisa don't have that food niche covered) made me grumpy today. Can we maybe entreat a Thai place to enter the competition? Because rice noodles are awesome.
Anyway, the whining ends here. Y'all go enjoy your free pizza! I wish I could. I miss pizza like nothing else.
