I Ate a Raw Vegan Diet For a Week in USC Dining Halls

by Alexis M Peters ‘20

You may have heard of vegetarian and vegan diets. But what the heck is raw vegan? Let me explain. Raw veganism is a diet in which you don’t eat any meat or dairy products, and you don’t eat anything cooked. So what do you eat, you may ask? Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and sprouts. “Why would you do this to yourself?” This was a question my friends asked of me many times. My plan was actually to eat raw vegan for two weeks, and I wanted to do it as a sort of cleanse, so that I could have a fresh, healthy start for the new year. Except, two weeks didn’t really work out for me… But, we’ll get to that later.

My goal for this raw vegan journey was to eat super fresh foods, cleanse my body, and maybe have glowing skin and silky hair by the end of it. Since I have a meal plan (and also for experiment’s sake), I planned to exclusively eat food from the dining hall. So, let’s begin!

Day 1

Breakfast

I am a hardcore breakfast person. I love breakfast. So, it was quite strange walking into the dining hall and not being able to eat most of the food there. I got lucky this morning, because Parkside doesn’t usually have precut fruit in the mornings, but today they had watermelon! I got a big plate of that, some bananas, and two oranges to go.

Lunch

I surprisingly wasn’t too hungry up until lunch time, and at lunch I ate a HUGE salad. It was literally so big, some veggies were about to fall off my plate. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really have any salad dressing because I wasn’t sure if any of them were vegan, and I didn’t know if any of the ingredients had been cooked first, or if any of them were vegan. LABEL YOUR STUFF USC!

Dinner

Dinner was another salad! This time from the Village dining hall, and I decided to get some salad dressing too, because I couldn’t bear the thought of a dry salad. I had thought maybe the plant based bar would have some options for me, but most of it was cooked.

Day 2

Breakfast

There are remnants of some cantaloupe slices at Parkside, but they had been gobbled up pretty quickly, so I had about a million bananas (just 5 really) and took an apple and a plum to go. The problem I had discovered was that USC dining halls are pretty bad at stocking ripe fruit. The plum was sour, and the apple was just plain gross. All in all, breakfast was a bust.

Lunch

A great big salad for lunch. No surprise there. At this point, I’m really craving some bread, and I don’t even dare a glance at the french fries. When I sat down, some people next to me are eating bacon wrapped hot dogs, and I feel a little better about my dressing-less salad.

Dinner

You already know what’s for dinner. You don’t need to see another picture of my salad. It’s the same as earlier today. And yesterday…

Day 3

Breakfast

At this point, I just really want some variety. No precut fruit at Parkside today, so I trek across campus to EVK in hopes of something better. Luckily, they had some smoothies and ripe pineapples. I even had some warm water with lemon for something different.

Lunch

If I were cooking for myself, I would really be able to mix up my salads. People who eat raw buy lots of ingredients and make really delicious looking salads and wraps and concoctions with foods like kale, spinach, celery, zucchini, strawberries, blueberries, mangoes, avocados, and so much more! But alas, these are veggies that one cannot find in the dining hall. I honestly would have settled for a larger array of fruits (berries anyone?!?) and some raw veggies you typically find on those platters (carrot sticks!!!! Why do we not have any carrot sticks?) Obligatory salad pic (even though all my salads look exactly the same):

Dinner

I was pretty hungry in between meals, so I bought some raw trail mix from Trader Joes. The nuts kept my hunger down, and instead of yet another salad, I just gobbled down half the bag of trail mix.

Day 4

Breakfast

I couldn’t go to the dining hall and eat yet another sad meal of green bananas, sour plums, and unripe apples. So I paid nine dollars for an acai bowl. It was insanely good! I had been dying for some fresh, ripe berries! But the only other thing I wanted at this point was warm food. I missed warm food so much.

Lunch

The dining hall salad bar options are so incredibly limited, so for lunch, I went to Cava, and realized that hummus is cooked and tzatziki sauce isn’t vegan. Oops.

Dinner

*sigh*

Day 5

Breakfast

I caved. I just couldn’t eat more cold unripe fruit. (Why are the cantaloupes never ever ripe???) So, I had some roasted potatoes, but they were vegan!

Lunch

Okay, so EVK had some vegan “beef” and broccoli, and I couldn’t say no. Also rice. And green beans. The only raw part of the meal was the watermelon, but at least it was all vegan. *shrugs*

Dinner

Alright, alright. So, I didn’t make it a whole week. I made it five days, but it was one of the most difficult five days of my life! I wouldn’t recommend going raw vegan if your only source of food is the dining hall and USC restaurants. You just can’t get the variety of fruits and vegetables you need for sufficient nutrients. All week, I would have done anything for a mango or a peach or an avocado, or some celery, or anything that wasn’t a salad.

The only benefit I saw was in my digestion, so that’s a plus. But I have to say, I am very happy to not eat salads twice a day, every day. USC, you need to step up your fruit and veggie game, because sometimes it’s a struggle to eat healthy in those dining halls.

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