(Not) Gluten-Free

Reported by Ashleigh Scheuneman  

Students with dietary needs like a gluten-free menu are struggling to find safe food options in the Canyon Commons at George Fox University (GFU) due to cross-contamination and lack of communication by the school’s catering service, Bon Appetit. 

GFU promises that every student will “Be Known”; however, students who suffer from celiac disease or other sensitivities to gluten are often passed over when it comes to meals. After being diagnosed with celiac disease her freshman year of college, junior Leann Barnes said, “Nobody really talked to me or helped me figure out what was the best thing to do. I just asked if I could have a cupboard in the kitchen that was locked in Pennington, so they got me a key to one of the locked cupboards so I could store more stuff in there.”

Gluten is the only food allergy that the Bon Appetite Cafe cannot accommodate according to Jason Rosvall, the general manager of food services at the Bon. He said: “Other than celiac, I can accommodate every type of allergy in the kitchen. The only reason I say celiac is a difficult one is because we’re not a gluten-free kitchen, and someone who is celiac is more sensitive to that. So you could have flour on a cookie and put it in the oven, and then the fan will blow the flour around. Then when you put chicken in that same oven, it could blow on it, so that one’s tough.” 

Students who eat at the Bon trust in the ability of those in charge to communicate with them about ingredients and possible allergic contaminants. However, Rosvall said that the only way students would know about gluten-free substitutes is through taking time out of their day to have a conversation with him or the chef.

“After a month or two students learn that they have to speak up, and if they want something they’ll start to ask these questions,” Rosvall said. “All of our servers and all of our cooks go through a celiac awareness training and an allergy training, so they’re all very knowledgeable on different allergens, but the chef is the final say on if it’s safe for somebody to eat. So if somebody were to walk up and say, ‘I can’t have carrots, are there any carrots in this dish,’ everybody is trained to say, ‘Let me go get the chef for you.’ And that chef comes out and says, ‘What are you allergic to, ok you can’t have this or this is safe for you to eat.’”

A few short years ago, Barnes had a very different experience with the previous manager. “At one point I was inquiring about a specific food to see if it had been cross-contaminated, and he asked me, ‘Well have you had that before and how did that make you feel?’ What is healthy and good for other people is like poison to people with celiac disease,” said Barnes. “His nonchalant attitude about poison possibly being in my food was pretty concerning. From that point on, I didn’t see the point in talking with him and trying to figure it out because he seemed very dismissive of my concerns and also had an arrogance about him, like he knew what he was talking about when in reality he didn’t.” 

Barnes also pointed out that the labels attached to certain food items are not always correct. “My roommate last year, who also had celiac disease, said that she was also eating in the Bon her freshman year,” she said. “There was a dish that was marked as not containing gluten ingredients and she ate it. She didn’t realize until halfway through it that it in fact did contain flour in the sauce. She got very sick and lost a lot of weight and was sick for about a month. That was back in 2018, 2019.” 

Covid-19 adds another tangle to the web. According to Rosvall, the food company where certain ingredients are obtained will occasionally substitute in something with gluten if they are out of a gluten-free item. As the person who makes all food decisions, Rosvall has his hands full with the labels on the menu, monitoring what comes in from the food company, and other food-related tasks. 

For those who are looking to try a relatively gluten-free diet, the Bon is adequate in meeting your needs. In fact, they offer prepackaged gluten-free hamburger buns and cookies; students just need to know to ask for them. According to Rosvall, gluten-free pasta and pizza are also offered. Even so, GFU needs someone to better monitor the food and food labels; it’s time for those with a gluten allergy or celiac disease to “Be Known.”