The Milton Academy Food Council

If the old saying—you are what you eat—holds true, students are lucky to have the Milton Academy Food Council on the case, helping students make healthy choices and advocating for student-tastes.

The Milton Academy Food Council, a group of students, faculty and staff interested in the Milton dining experience meets semi-weekly. The Council works hand in hand with Aramark, Milton’s dining contractor, to make the Milton Academy dining experience a pleasant one for the whole community. Students Abby Wright ’04, Tom Myers ’04 and Tod Chubrich ’03 are veteran food council members, serving on the council for their second year. Julia Rivellino-Lyons (history department), Jenny Stortz (modern languages department), Connie Brown, Erica Banderob (math department), Christine Savini (diversity planning), Leslie Sullivan (business office) represent faculty and staff interests and dining director Donna Freeborn, Scott Doyle and Andrew Hobson represent Aramark.

Since the opening of school, the Food Council and Aramark have worked as a team to provide students with healthy meal options, to teach students to eat well and to ensure that the students’ suggestions and dietary needs are met. As a result of this team work, student diners noticed a number of changes in the dining hall this year. New this year are: a stew and chili station, increased labeling of items in the salad and sandwich bars, nutritional information posted at each hot food station, and a rotating salad dressing option.

While chicken patties and fries are still popular lunch items in Forbes, parents may be surprised to hear that student suggestions and comments are most often about nutrition, an issue the Council discusses at every meeting. Each week Aramark identifies heart healthy choices on the week’s menu. The Food Council and Aramark also work together on a monthly educational newsletter—a recent issue focused on hydrogenated fats and cholesterol levels. This past fall an intern nutritionist from Aramark worked with the food council to ensure that vegetarian needs were being met.

Food Council meetings take place in the dining hall and are focused on a standard agenda that includes the following discussion topics: overall dining experience, appearance of food, freshness, consistency of quality, variety of menu options, availability of healthy options, friendliness of staff, cleanliness and hours of operation. Each meeting begins with a discussion of the past week’s menu.

“When we make suggestions, things change very quickly,” says Abby. As a member of Hathaway House, Abby represents East Campus interests. “On East campus, students wanted fresh vegetables and cheeses available at dinner. We talked about it at Food Council and now every dorm has a cheese and vegetable platter available at dinner.”

The Food Council and Aramark also work hard to meet the needs of a diverse boarding community. This year rice cookers were placed in East Campus dorms and in Forbes Dining Hall so those students for whom rice is a staple at every meal at home, don’t need to alter their eating habits at School.

“We talk a lot about diversifying the menu,” says Tom. “Last year Aramark brought us menus from Boston University. We looked them over and tried to incorporate some new menu items this year. Adding new menu items into the meal rotation is something the Council talks about a lot.
The student members of the Council not only advocate for their fellow students, they say they also learn a lot about how the dining hall and corporate offices work. “Aramark tries to accommodate the things we request and most of the time can easily do so,” says Abby, “but we learned that Aramark must also deal with corporate contracts which set limitations on certain foods and brands we can get here at Milton, so while they may not be able to get a certain type of yogurt they try to get a similar product.

Students with complaints or suggestions regarding the dining hall and evening dinners in the dorms should contact a member of the Food Council. Food Council representatives constantly monitor the online day and boarding conferences and take those issues to the food council meetings.