For those who know me personally, you know that I absolutely hate the dining hall and will do everything to avoid it at all costs. For those who don’t know me, I’ll tell you now. I absolutely hate the dining hall, and I will do anything humanly possible to steer clear. Many people assume that I don’t like the dining hall because I don’t like how the food tastes. While the food at the dining hall could taste better, there are many more factors that contribute as to why I despise the dining hall.

I was first turned off to the dining hall when I would read the menu or the signs next to the food once inside the dining hall, and the allergens would not be displayed correctly. As a person who is lactose intolerant, it is imperative that I know the allergens that are in my food. Foods like pizza and chicken parmesan obviously have milk, but half of the time, these foods were not flagged as containing dairy. This carelessness made me very skeptical of what I could eat at the dining hall. If the kitchen staff could not properly label foods half the time that obviously contained milk, how could they label foods that could go either way with dairy content?

I was ultimately turned off to the dining hall when I began gaining weight. Going into college, I was considered slightly underweight. I was well-aware of the dreaded “Freshman 15,” but I didn’t think it would happen to me because I already ate super healthy and enjoyed working out. When I got to college, I was cognizant of what I was putting into my body. I went to the all-you-can-eat dining hall once or twice a day, usually eating grilled meat and rice, fruit, or a salad—everything I would have eaten on a daily basis at home. I would treat myself once or twice a week, but I still kept it healthy. For example, instead of getting fries with my burger, I headed over to the salad bar for some fruit, salad, or steamed veggies. To be honest, though, the food never really filled me up. I would eat and get full only to be hungry again two hours later. As a result, I snacked, but it was healthy. I usually reached for apple slices with peanut butter or baby carrots with hummus. I thought I was eating fine and working out enough, maybe even better and more than I was in high school, until I came home for holiday break and stepped on the scale. I was about 10 pounds heavier, and I still had two more quarters of freshman year.

Before I left home in January to go back to school, I weighed myself again. I was about four pounds lighter than the beginning of break. I was horribly confused. If anything, I was eating worse at home than I was at UCR. All of break, I was going out with my friends from high school for lunch and dinner and eating plenty of cookies and cake at holiday parties. I also went on a trip to Mexico with my family (tacos and margaritas at almost every meal). My weight gain and loss was not making sense. That’s when I realized it had to be something in the food being served on campus.

Heading into my second quarter, I became even more aware of what I was eating at the dining hall. I ate salad more frequently, but I still ended up gaining weight. I came home for spring break, weighed myself, and discovered that I gained back everything I lost and then some. I was 19 pounds heavier than I was in September. I was puzzled, but I knew I had to make a change. I decided to eliminate eating at the dining hall and begin making my own food in my room (there is a whole other future article for this).

In the past four weeks, I have eaten at the dining hall twice. At the point of writing this article, I have lost about eight pounds, and I plan on losing more. Though I didn’t think I looked any different with the weight gain, I have noticed a difference with the weight loss. My face does not look as swollen, and my pants are a little bit looser. It’s still a mystery to me as to how many chemicals, fillers, and grams of salt and sugar are in the food at the dining hall, but the fact that I lost so much so quickly as soon as I stopped eating at the dining hall not once but twice confirms that it is UCR’s health habits that need to change and not mine.