Collegiate Times

The Virginia Tech dining program services has started a nutrition blog for students who are interested in healthier choices when eating on campus. T

The marketing department wanted to launch a blog in a different format to get information out there and to have another way to communicate with students.

"We wanted a way to communicate healthy nutrition messages to students," said Jenny Lindsey, administrative dietician for student programs. "Our department of student programs has started several blogs lately for different subjects." Assistant communications manager for dining programs, Rachel DeLauder agreed that the blog would be the best way to reach out to students. "A great place to do this instead of putting table cards on the Web site would be to make a blog," DeLauder said. "That way she could update it regularly with information."

Junior student assistant dietician Rachel Cornett has contributed to the health blog and came up with the idea to put recipes on the page. "We recognized that a lot of students eat on campus and a lot of people can't really determine what are healthy options and what are not," Cornett said.

"There are also lots of people who are commuters and sometimes they eat here and sometimes they eat off campus," Cornett said. "We wanted to show them healthy options for recipes that they could make if they were to stay home and eat, as well as some ingredients that they could get from our dining halls if they wanted to make their foods at home."

Included within the recipes is a rough estimate of how much the meal would actually cost to make. "I calculated the prices based on myself going to the grocery store looking at different prices for the items listed," Cornett said. "Our theme for the recipes was trying to make a recipe in under 30 minutes on a budget. We wanted to make them fairly simple."

The blog is written from a student perspective. "It's more or less like me trying to relate to other students on campus and it's a bit more personal," Cornett said.

Although the blog was recently launched, it has been getting some activity that shows promise. "One day we got 522 hits," Cornett said. "And it has stayed constant since we've launched it with about 50-100 hits every day. The feedback I've gotten -- everybody really likes it and finds it helpful. We're trying to promote it and use as an opportunity to become healthier."

"Dining services is always looking for student feedback in different ways like comment cards. We figured this would be a good way to be interactive with the students so they could tell us what they want," DeLauder said. "Because it really is for them and the information we want to share is current and up-to-date."

The blog is also being used as a point of contact for students who have questions about nutrition. "It's a good way to ask questions of us, rather than talking to their friends and getting nutrition information that may not be accurate," Lindsey said. "They can post up a question, and Rachel or I can answer giving accurate information."

"We would love more questions and feedback from students because we want to teach and give out good information," Lindsey said.

Both Lindsey and Cornett are hoping for more questions and feedback within the blog. "We're trying to encourage more students to post on the Web site; if they have questions to let us know," Cornett said.