From Monday, March 3 through Friday, March 7, participants in the 5 Days challenge, including many of Cornell Dining’s senior management team, chefs, and other staff, will eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day at Cornell Dining’s eateries while adhering to one of six diets: vegetarian, vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, dairy- and gluten-free, or Kosher. We’ll be blogging about our experiences right here.

Cornell Dining’s management team and 5 Days team leaders in their 5 Days t-shirts.

Director of Cornell Dining Gail Finan says “5 Days” was inspired by the growing number of students on campus who follow restricted diets, whether it be for health, religious, or ethical reasons, or due to food allergies. “We want all of our customers to have a wide variety of healthy and delicious dining options to choose from every day,” she says. “Adopting a special diet for a week will help us understand the unique preferences and challenges of many students on campus, and enable us to better meet their needs.”

Team members will share photographs, meal descriptions, recipe ideas, and daily successes and struggles on the blog, and prizes will be awarded for the most creative blog post, best meal description, and best photo.

“I’m on the vegan team, and I think it’s going to be extremely challenging to have no meat or dairy for five days,” says Steven Miller, Senior Executive Chef at Cornell Dining. “I know this experience will help me better appreciate what options are available to our vegan customers, as well as give me ideas for new vegan offerings.”

We hope you’ll follow along as we share our experiences over the next week, and offer your comments and suggestions here on the blog, or on Cornell Dining’s Facebook and Twitter.

In an effort to connect staff and students and learn about different diets and lifestyles of the people they serve, Cornell Dining has launched 5 Days, An Experiment! From March 3rd- 7th, members of Cornell Dining’s management, chefs, and staff will adhere to one of six special diets: vegetarian, vegan, dairy free, gluten free, Kosher or dairy/gluten free, and post here about their experiences on campus. Stay tuned for more details!