Chicken, fish, salad bars - name it and a college student living in a dormitory can probably get a balanced meal that is diverse and different from yesterday’s meal. That may be an easy truth for meat eaters, but sadly that truth does not always hold up for vegetarians, especially those who are vegans.

    One in four students say that vegan meals on college campuses are important, according to a 2005 study conducted by ARAMARK, a worldwide provider of managed food services. In the past most dining halls did not cater to the needs of vegans and vegetarians.

    Some students become vegetarians because the lifestyle saves money, is healthy, and is an easy way to lose weight. Reed Mangels, nutrition adviser for the Vegetarian Research Group said that 3 percent of adults are vegetarians and 10 percent consider themselves vegetarians even though they eat fish and or chicken.

    Dining halls have signs that notify students of possible food allergies. However, there may not always be signs that tell if the food is meatless or vegan. Still, dining halls are adapting to the recent growth of adult vegetarians.

    Laurie Ulrich Fuller, director of the League of Humane Voters, said, “There are a surprising number of foods that are vegan --no dairy or egg ingredients-- that one might have thought were only vegetarian.”

    An article in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian online daily newspaper reported 19,000 people convert every week. It is already difficult to obtain all the nutrients one needs to be healthy as a vegetarian, but the strain of not knowing exactly what is going into your body is just as important.

    Peta2’s website identifies Indiana University, Humboldt State University in California and the University of Puget Sound in the District of Columbia as the top three most vegetarian –friendly universities. Indiana University offers, among other things, sesame noodle and pea pod casserole, vegan garden burgers and vegan hot cakes. They also clearly mark vegan options.

    Stuffed green pepper, sautéed portabella over polenta and even soy yogurt are just some of the options things on Humboldt State’s menu. University of Puget Sound also has a wide selection including vegan cheeseburger and vegan biscuits and gravy, vegan field roast sloppy joe.

    Alexis Morgan, 19, a student and vegetarian at Penn State says that the food is excellent and that she does not think any improvements need to be made. Morgan is also happy about her choice to be a vegetarian. She says that organic foods can be expensive sometimes but are not as much as meat.

    Lindsay Goldsmith, 20, was a vegan for about a year and Jess Roberts, 20, a vegetarian for 13 years, both are students at Elizabethtown College. Goldsmith sent one e-mail to the head of dining services, Eric Turzai, and explained her situation to him.

    “Eric Turzai and his staff took the list available to all students and took off everything that was not vegan, leaving me with a list of everything possible that I could eat every single day,” Goldsmith said.

    “There are signs at almost every food station saying what is in a food item.  They also put signs at the soup station saying if the soup is vegetarian or vegan, which is very helpful because you never know if the soup has chicken or beef broth in it,” Roberts said.

    “Vegan meals can be made quite easily, too, by simply asking the server for a slight modification to the standard fare. Many of the same techniques vegans use to get by in non-vegan restaurants would apply to dorm life, too,” Fuller said.