Nutrition facts

If you knew that you could cut 90 calories from your Good Morning Camper bagel from Alpine by choosing bacon instead of sausage, would you make this simple switch?

Unfortunately, Duke students do not have the resources to easily make these basic health decisions. We face a wide variety of food options, some of which are healthy and some of which are not. But deciding what is healthy is often a guessing game. Duke needs to make nutrition information for on-campus vendors easily accessible to students.

In order for students to make healthy eating decisions, we need to have accurate information. It is that simple. However, currently students must guess what they are putting into their bodies, using often incorrect heuristics. For example, many students purchase salads on the assumption that they are a healthy alternative. However, with salad dressing, cheese and croutons, salads are often higher in calories if not in fat than most sandwiches. The two-ounce ranch dressing packet from Subway adds 320 calories to any salad, giving it a higher total than the vast majority of sandwiches.

Currently, only a limited amount of nutrition information is available for on-campus foods. By scouring Web sites, students can find nutrition facts for chains such as Subway and Chick-fil-A and for a small selection of items for venues like The Loop and Saladelia.

Requiring students to go online, scrutinize different menu choices and then select the best meal is unrealistic at best. Most students are not sufficiently health-conscious to go through this process. In fact, Duke Dining Services is actually counting on it.

The University has often justified preventing the public display of nutritional facts by claiming that visual reminders of caloric and fat content will cause more students to suffer eating disorders. This is a valid concern. At Duke, where social pressure to be physically attractive runs high, we certainly don't need another force that encourages disordered eating.

However, although calorie counting is typically associated with eating disorders, it also has benefits. Just as there are people who will eat less because they know calorie amounts, there are people who will eat more when they have more knowledge. Students concerned with their health often find themselves limited to the few menu options for which they have information. I know Duke girls who are scared of eating simply because they are unaware of their food's nutritional contents. Their solution: stop eating.

In evaluating any policy, one has to compare the marginal cost and the marginal gain. Though there will be some students on the margins, the vast majority of change will come from empowering people to make small steps in the right direction every day-such as substituting the bacon for sausage on your bagel.