have berries at meetings to entice people to show up, because the dining hall never had them.

...See here: South Dining Hall menus.

The choices are not exactly reflective of a whole-food plant-based diet, but there are resources to get fruit and vegetables. For dinner tonight,. for example, they list (as for every meal, it seems) apples, oranges, and bananas as fruit choices. A salad bar includes iceberg lettuce (thumbs down for that), spinach, and "locally grown salad greens." Under "Vegan," they list carrots, celery, flax seed, and almonds along with hummus and a few other items. The pasta stir fry allows you to choose tomatoes, broccoli, and mushrooms.

Our younger daughter ('20) lived in Farley and went to the NDH, and I ate there maybe a half-dozen time during her tenure, and got into the SDH, my old haunt, a few times as well. Is it foodie-quality stuff? Not really. Is it minimally adequate? I'd say so. Abysmal seems a bit more than how I'd describe it. There are also a lot of choices outside of the dining halls that include outlets that match the trend towards healthier quick-service food. For example, there was a Mediterranean spot in the Hesburgh Center where you could get a salad or a rice bowl with Naf Naf Grill-style toppings--garbanzos, baba ganouj, etc. Flip Kitchen in the Huddle area of LaFortune has rice bowls, salads, smoothies, and flatbreads. In the last several months I was there and had a Thai style chicken bowl with carrots, lettuce, Chinese cabbage, and other stuff.

I can’t speak to all the offerings, but I know there was ample fresh fruit options when we took the kids to the dining hall last fall. And I would highly doubt there are fewer fruit options than there were when I was a student.

Certainly making food for such large numbers has its challenges, and there are likely still more options that are carb-heavy or fried. And an athletics program policing choices is another challenge when there are options with varying nutritional value. But it’s not hard to get salad with grilled chicken and hard-boiled eggs if we’re just talking about access to nutritional food.

for an Epicurean delight!

I must admit that when I was a kid I LOVED this stuff. I would bet my Mom to buy it. Although she was no health nut, she rarely would. I remember the big cans of it, and you'd punch out a triangle-shaped hole on each side and it would come glug-glug-gluging out. So delicious. And, as the commercial makes clear, loaded with good for you fruit, too.

the kids but we've heard plenty of jokes about how the menus are far more favorable when there are lots of parents anticipated to be in town (Admitted students weekends, etc). My kid isn't super picky so honestly I've been surprised about the complaints regarding food. I didn't have any complaints back in the 90s!