For those who choose to eat tofu instead of turkey and other meat products, ASU is among the nation's best universities when it comes to accommodating vegetarians, according to animal-rights activist group, peta2.
Peta2, the youth and college division of PETA, listed ASU among 39 other universities on its "Most Vegetarian-Friendly Colleges" list Thursday. The list included 29 U.S. and 10 Canadian universities.
The list doesn't rank the universities, but offers students the chance to vote for each school on their Web site, peta2.com.
"ASU has really gone above and beyond to meet the requests of students looking for vegetarian and vegan cuisine," said Ryan Huling, college campaign coordinator for peta2.com, in an e-mail. "With vegetarianism becoming more popular than ever, especially among college students, it's wonderful to see [ASU] leading the charge with such delicious and cruelty-free dishes."
Huling said the 40 colleges were chosen based on nomination messages peta2 received via its Myspace.com and Facebook.com accounts and e-mail requests from students.
"ASU students raved about having such a vegetarian-friendly campus, so we were thrilled to nominate them for this year's contest," Huling said.
But some ASU students, like Zina Alam, a material science engineering sophomore, believe campus dining isn't doing nearly enough for the vegetarian and vegan community.
Alam, who has lived on campus both her freshman and sophomore years, said that while she found some vegetarian options in the campus dining halls and markets, she felt there weren't enough consistent choices available.
"The meal plan is designed for you to live your life on campus food, or at least most of it," Alam said. "And even though there are vegetarian options, there isn't [room for] a vegetarian lifestyle, which is a huge difference. You can live on salad and mac and cheese all the time, but that's not a healthy lifestyle."
Collin Phillips, an economics sophomore, agreed that the vegetarian choices on campus are slim, but he said he had less trouble his freshman year on campus.
"I actually got out of the meal plan," Phillips said. "I basically told the school that I live a vegan [lifestyle] in order to not be on the meal plan. But yeah, there was much difficulty eating [on campus] even without being on the meal plan."
Phillips added that his daily choices for vegetarian food on campus are relatively unhealthy, repetitive and extremely limited. He tends to eat a cheese pizza from Papa John's every day, he added.
Alam said she has had a few bad experiences with campus dining; including an instance where she was told a dish was vegetarian when in fact it wasn't. She added that ASU should either try harder to help the vegans and vegetarians, or not try at all.
"I don't think they should bother serving vegetarian food," Alam said. "Or at least post and update the menus on the campus dining Web site so people know when and where vegetarian and vegan options are being offered."
