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Health

Buffalo Lowering Sodium

ampus Dining & Shops (CDS) at the University at has other ingredients like sesame and poppy seeds. Making
Buffalo in New York is collaborating with Cornell that switch reduced sodium by 45 percent.
C Cooperative Extension of Niagara County as part of The school also made a change to a lower-sodium sliced
a five-year, $1.975 million grant that the New York State De- turkey for its deli sandwiches. “We are reaching out to com-
partment of Health (NYSDOH) received from the Centers for panies to see what their low-sodium options are and whether
Disease Control and Prevention for the Sodium Reduction in they are able to supply the volume that we need,” said Bend-
Communities Program. The goal of the program is to imple- ersky. “We slice a lot of turkey at our units. That was another
ment and evaluate community-based strategies for reducing challenge, not only to source a low-sodium item, but also will
sodium consumption in early childhood education centers they be able to meet our volume needs on campus. Flavor was
along with universities and colleges in four New York counties. also a major factor.”
“It is a five-year public health initiative to basically help Tweaking of recipes has also brought the sodium content
prevent risk factors for high blood pressure and heart dis- down. “As we have gone through our recipes, working very
ease,” said Lori Bendersky, MS, RD, CDN for CDS. “It isn’t closely with Lori, we were very conscientious of trying to bal-
necessarily that students are at risk at this time in their life, ance the nutritional needs, particularly in regards to sodium,”
but it is something they should think about as they enter into said Executive Chef Neal Plazio. “Is there a flavor that we can
adulthood in terms of selecting their own foods. We definitely introduce that offsets that desire for salt? Just like the pretzel
were excited about the initiative and anything we can do to thins, something like vinegar or something tart will highlight
make our recipes better and healthier for our students, faculty the food. We have been mindful of this for the four years I
and campus community.” have been here — trying to balance what is going into the
With the grant being for a five-year period, CDS wanted to recipes. That has been going on for a while.”
start small. “We didn’t want to tackle too much at once, so we CDS was able to analyze the nutrition content of its recipes
thought the first area we would target is grab ’n go because we using Foodservice Suite from CBORD. “It is our primary
distribute a lot of that food across campus,” said Bendersky. program that we use on campus,” said Bendersky. “That is
“It is just an easy way to start the first year. Moving forward, how we create recipes on campus and do all of the nutritional
we are also going to be looking at our dining centers and some analysis ingredient information. That way we can also publish
of our food courts and expanding from there.” that onto our nutrition websites. The students have access to
The first area looked at was the sodium content of current that information for all of our recipes, including grab ’n go.
recipes and purchased items sold in the program. “We did an They can view the nutrition facts label, including the sodium,
analysis of all of the items that we currently sold in grab ’n of all of our recipes online or printed on the product.”
go and targeted those specific items or recipes that were very In some cases, the school has replaced purchased items by
high in sodium and tried to see if we could either tweak the making them themselves. “I think some of the real concern for
recipe or see if there was another item we could purchase that grab ’n go comes with some of the items being purchased,”
would lower the sodium content,” she said. said Plazio. “Bought dressings tend to be higher in sodium,
For example, the school went from a regular pretzel thin, so with some of our smaller operations, like our food truck,
which is topped with salt, to the everything variety, which we have gone to homemade dressings, and we have been able

16 | NOVEMBER 2017 ON-CAMPUS HOSPITALITY