Rutgers Ditches Cold Cuts, Chicken Nuggets In Menu Overhaul

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ - Like chicken nuggets and cold cuts? They're no longer served at the Neilson main dining hall at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus. Pork sausage is longer offered at breakfast and hot sauce will no longer be served at wing night (replaced by fresh spices).

Instead of pork sausage at breakfast, hungry students will find smoked chicken sausage served with spinach on a whole-grain English muffin. A new bagel bar will feature vegetable cream cheese mixed in-house and loaded with broccoli, squash and scallions.

It's all part of a sweeping menu overall Rutgers is doing in the name of serving less processed food and more plant-based dining options, the school says. Perhaps the biggest change is that Rutgers is no longer serving commercial cold cuts: Students will be able to order sandwiches, but instead of being made with processed meats, they will served with meats roasted in house (turkey, roast beef, ham, etc.)

“Students aren’t going to see salami and boiled ham. They are going to see more natural food," said Ian Keith, a Rutgers chef who is leading the effort to redesign menus in the dining halls. Keith is already the head chef for Harvest, a café at the New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health at Rutgers, which has long served healthy food.

“For too long we all have been heavily dependent on processed food," he said. “We are trying to get back to whole, minimally-processed foods without refined sugars and develop a palate of globally sourced spices, rather than so much sodium and preservatives."

Neilson Hall will begin serving poached salmon and halal lamb. Fresh spices will replace hot sauce from a jar on wing night, and the wings will be baked instead of fried. Hash browns that went from a box into the deep fryer are also out. In their place, "students will be able to order purple Peruvian hash made with heirloom potatoes, spinach and roasted onions," said the university in a press release announcing the changes.

Currently the changes are at one dining hall on the New Brunswick campus (Neilson) and for now are only at breakfast and in the take-out line.

But it's a menu makeover Rutgers said they plan to extend campus-wide, and will expand to the three other dining halls at the New Brunswick campus in the fall. Cooked-to-order stations in the dining halls will be revamped next, according to Joe Charette, the executive director of Rutgers dining services.

As of now, the menu changes have not also resulted in a price change. "Typically, animal proteins cost more than plant proteins," said Charette. "We expect it will cost less to serve, and the worst case scenario is, it will cost the same. We do not foresee a cost increase."

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