The University of Memphis R. Brad Martin Wellness Center recently opened the Tiger Café, an on-campus food service for students looking to have healthy and nutritious options.
Katie Cook is the Director of Nutrition services for the university. She is the head of the Tiger Café and responsible for the creation of the eatery.
“We wanted the Tiger Café to be an educational opportunity as well as providing nutrition information and nutrition products,” she said.
Cook started her position with the Wellness Center in August and has been working on the café since then. The process consisted of creating the menu, seeing what students liked and did not like among other things.
“It’s been a while but because of that we’ve really been able to tailor our menu,” she explained.
The menu has a wide variety of healthy food including trail mix, protein snacks, and smoothies. Recently, students have been able to give their input through samples and competitions to see which menu items they thought were the best.
“The past couple months we’ve done different samples and are really trying to figure out what students really like,” she said.
Students lined the counter as they ordered a variety of nutritious food. Mary Claire Hamm is a freshman elementary education major who frequently attends the gym.
“I’m hoping it will give me a healthier option,” Hamm said.
According to Cook, each smoothie has “2-3 servings of fruits and vegetables, 20 grams of protein or more, and a source of healthy fats.” The frozen produce and other ingredients like Greek yogurt, flax seeds, and chia seeds provide other nutritional value to the snack. All of the components have a variety health benefits.
“They might be high in different vitamins and minerals. They might be high in different proteins,” Cook said.
For students like Hamm, the temptation is to go back home and eat junk food or food with limited nutritional value, something she said she doesn’t want after a good worko
“That’s not the option I need to get, but here they offer some better options,” she said.
Cook understood the needs and desires of student to have healthier options in their day to day lives so she made recipes and nutrition information easily accessible to students.
“We wanted to be able to provide the nutrition information of all of our products, so we actually have a QR code on the front counter.”
The code links to a webpage on the university website where detailed recipes and nutrition facts are listed so students can make the healthy snacks on their own.
To further educational opportunities for students at using the wellness center, Cook hired students who are studying nutrition. It is important to have some students with an education background in nutrition because “there are so many different sources of nutrition out there and a lot of them aren’t based on scientific evidence.”
The benefit of having nutrition students run the counter is that it allows for others to learn.
“If you have questions about nutrition we want that to be a place where you can go ask your question and get a scienced based answer,” Cook remarked.
Though the new Tiger Café offers many healthy snack options and smoothies that are “perfect after a workout,” it’s goal is to provide students with the resources needed to have a healthier lifestyle.
“We are really wanting to provide the nutrition education so people can take that forward with them,” she said.
A pair of students in line at the Tiger Café. Students can scan the QR code on the counter to find nutrition facts and recipes for items on the menu. // Photo: Taylor Ann Carpenter
