Rutgers leads charge for healthy eating

NEW BRUNSWICK — Staff, faculty and students at Rutgers University are standing up for healthy eating and against hunger this fall.

Rutgers Dining Services will serve “sustainable meals” in university dining facilities on Oct. 19, using only locally produced food.

“By local, we mean as local as possible,” said Peggy Policastro, a nutritionist in Dining Services. “If we serve you an apple, it’ll be an apple from New Jersey, and very likely from Middlesex County. If we serve you beef, you can be sure it’s been raised within 50 miles of where you’re eating it.”

Rutgers Against Hunger (RAH), a universitywide initiative that addresses the issue of hunger across New Jersey, has been collecting food for five weeks and will send that food to pantries on Oct. 24, Food Day.

Since the week of Sept. 13, students, staff and faculty have been depositing canned and nonperishable food at pickup points around campus. RAH asked that donations be based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new recommendations for a healthy diet, called My Plate, which emphasizes fruit and vegetables, whole grains and more protein from sources other than meat. Donations focused on particular kinds of food each week: grains the first week, then vegetables, fruits, dairy and protein.

Kathleen Decker, program coordinator for Rutgers Against Hunger, said the food collected over the past several weeks will go to three regional pantries: the Highland Park Community Food Pantry in Highland Park, the Interfaith Food Pantry in Morristown and Your Grandmother’s Cupboard in Toms River.

“The food has been brought to my office from all the collection points on campus,” Decker said. “When we’re done, it will amount to something between 1,300 and 1,400 pounds of healthy food.”

On Food Day, the Rutgers Nutrition Club and Kappa Omicron Nu (the national human sciences honor society) will hand out apples from local farms from 2 to 4 p.m. at all student centers on the New Brunswick and Piscataway campuses. On the Livingston Campus, Livingston Residence Life is paying for the apples.

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Healthy Lifestyle – with Bill & Sheila