Students curious about the nutritional value of their meals at Southside, Ike’s and The Globe dining halls on George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus will find that, yes, there’s an app for that, as well as dedicated tablets linked directly to it.
BITE by Sodexo is an app available for smartphones that details the ingredients and nutritional content of hundreds of Mason Dining food offerings. New this year are stationary tablet stands at Southside and at Ike’s resident dining halls that will link to BITE.
Besides offering students the convenience of learning calorie counts and nutritional content, the tablets, installed at various stations in the dining halls, will allow students to give feedback to the Sodexo staff and to learn about special promotions.
“The tablets will be helpful for people who are trying to eat healthy and track their nutritional information, as well as for those who have allergies and need to know the ingredients,” said Caitlin Lundquist, Mason marketing coordinator for Sodexo, the university’s food service provider. She added that Mason is the BITE app’s top campus for downloads and views.
Also new this year are indoor herb production systems called Urban Cultivators, located near the salad bars at Southside and Ike’s. A variety of herbs and microgreens will grow—without chemicals—in the climate-controlled cases and will be harvested for use by Sodexo cooks.
“We want the student to make the connection that the basil on the pizza, for example, is the same basil grown on campus,” Lundquist said. “We see the Urban Cultivators as an expansion of the on-campus food production program.”
The Presidents Park Greenhouse, a partnership between Sodexo and Mason’s Office of Sustainability, already provides hundreds of pounds of fresh food each year, “enjoying zero food-miles,” Lundquist said.
Also new this year: Ike’s is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week (it was 7 a.m. to 4 a.m. last year) and Southside closes at 2 a.m., reopening at 7 a.m. during the week. It will open at 10:30 a.m. on the weekends.