Podcast

Transcript

Joshua Miller (00:01)

All right. Welcome back everyone to another episode of the 5 in 20 podcast by Remarkable Academic Foods. I'm your host, Joshua Miller. We have at least another five questions in 20 something minutes today. And today we're tackling an important topic for students navigating.

Nicole (00:00)

Yeah.

Joshua Miller (00:15)

the college life with celiac disease. For many, heading into college is a time of excitement and new experiences. Still, unfortunately for those with celiac, it can bring unique challenges, especially when it comes to dining safely and maintaining a gluten-free lifestyle. So today I'm having a conversation with Nicole, the creator of the celiac college guide, an incredible resource designed to help students and their families manage gluten-free living on campus. Nicole's work empowers students to advocate for their dietary needs and confidently navigate the dining options. So hopefully they can thoroughly enjoy their college experience without compromising their health. In this episode, I'll dive into this topic with Nicole, going a little bit into our personal journey and also provide tips and feedback from myself as the principal consultant of Remarkable Academic Foods and former campus executive chef. So lots of information to dive into, whether you're a student, a parent,or a food service leader, this is a conversation packed with insights you will not want to miss.

All right, Nicole, thank you for taking the time to join in on this episode and this conversation to talk about a very important and what I think is a passionate topic. Not only should it be for me, but for everyone in food service. But before we get into details and get to know more about you, I want to ask you one icebreaker question. And this is just something just to kind of break the ice and get to know a little bit about you. It's very topic appropriate, which is what is your favorite gluten-free alternative ingredient?

Nicole (02:00)

favorite gluten free alternative ingredient. I might cheat a little bit here because in general I've ended up you know I never baked a thing in my life until my daughter's got diagnosed and so I had to learn the hard way and I actually think the best replacements if that's what you're looking for are the types of flours that actually use a number of different types of flours and ingredients not from my experience no one flour ends up being the right replacement

Joshua Miller (02:28)

unfortunately not.

Nicole (02:29)

exactly. And so it's the combo for me. Was that cheating or was that an okay answer there?

Joshua Miller (02:34)

That's an okay answer. I will accept that. And what I'll do is I'll add in my two cents of what's my favorite to date. Unfortunately, this came after I was in the operational scene, but I got to try it and I love it, which is a no soy tamari. So tamari is already gluten-free. And then now that you have no soy in it, being able to add that as an allergen-free option, period, right? It's a fully allergen-free item. And so that's my favorite.

Nicole (02:41)

Alright.

Yes, yes.

Joshua Miller (03:04)

just because of it's both celiac friendly and friendly for all other allergens, which has always been the struggle.

Nicole (03:11)

It's a great staple in my house. My daughter loves sushi and obviously a lot of soy sauces you can't trust. we always have that stocked in the cabinet.

Joshua Miller (03:19)

Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. let's go a little bit to your personal journey and talking a little bit about obviously the journey, but also what led to creating the Celiac College Guide, when it is start. Give us a little bit of feedback here.

Nicole (03:33)

I, first and foremost, I'm a mother to two daughters with celiac disease. I'm also a career educator. So I think both of those experiences definitely underpin how I got here. So a couple of years back, I read a study by the National Celiac Association and definitely kept me up a number of nights. I read that over half of students with celiac disease routinely skip meals in college, right? And so picture young kids navigating

Joshua Miller (03:58)

Mm.

Nicole (04:00)

being away from home for the first time and not feeling like they can safely eat somewhere. And so for kids with celiac disease, you it's not a matter of like preference or some sort of fad diet. It's a matter of food insecurity for them. I saw that a quarter of them report being glutened regularly. It's a few years back, this study, but still something disturbing. And then seeing the impact that they were reporting on both their social lives and academics. And my older daughter is now in high school. So...

You know, she's only a sophomore, but it's not so far away that we're going to be beginning our college search. And I realized that this was going to have to be a really important criteria, just like other criteria you might look at, size, location, academics, the ability for her to eat safely would have to be a factor. And then I also noticed, yeah, at the same time that there wasn't one good place to get this information. So there are Facebook groups where people are desperately scrambling to get reviews, to get information, and

Joshua Miller (04:47)

for sure.

Nicole (04:58)

I just figured there had to be a better way. And so I slept on it for a while. And then after about a year of hard work and a labor of love, the Celiac College Guide was born.

Joshua Miller (05:09)

Awesome that is definitely amazing and that sat to hear that that statistic even though it is obviously a little bit dated But it's I still believe that it's not too much better today. Unfortunately, there's a lot of work still to be done and The the food service industry as a whole in terms of educating and training and having the systems in place To do these things safely provide food including those with celiac. So

What is the mission of the Celiac College Guide? How does it support students with their celiac disease?

Nicole (05:38)

So we're really trying to do two things. So the first is just to ease the college search process and make sure that it's a less stressful. We know it's stressful to be getting with, right? So we're getting that information at their fingertips, but then also the impact change, right? And so our theory of action, and again, I think this comes from the educator in me, is let's continue to lift up best practice. Let's share those schools that are doing the right thing, that are getting that training, like, you I know you know so well.

Using technologies to support that journey, et cetera, and providing accommodations. And so the hope is by continuing to shine a bright light on schools that are doing this well or best practices, that it will eventually impact change. And so those statistics that we hear about will change. And I agree with you anecdotally, people have shared when I was at a gluten-free expo recently and the amount of people that stopped by and said, man, I wish I had this thing or it was so difficult for me. was really both gutting and motivating at the same time.

Joshua Miller (06:35)

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, so I always say, and I actually stole this from someone else, I didn't create it, the saying, but what's very, very important and what keeps students and what gets students to colleges is...what they eat and where they sleep, right? Those are two big factors when it comes to their decision making. So it's super important, especially for those with celiac. And so getting in a little bit into the research side of it, which is unique. I love this platform and I love the way it's laid out. So I do want to talk about the research that goes behind curating content for the guide that you have for people that are going through your website.

Nicole (07:17)

Sure, that's a great question. And thank you. And I'm sure my website designer, Debbie, would also appreciate that shout out. So the approach has been in a couple of different ways. So first of all, it is sourcing publicly available information. so each school, most schools have a website where they highlight their dining. So that was round one with finding some contacts for each of the schools. And we have that information in at this point for about 600 schools. So, you know, who can I contact? Where can I find this information? Sometimes even just putting in people's fingertips, here's the link to find this information to something that's going to be helpful for prospective students. And do they have certain what we call provisions like labeled allergens, a dietician on staff, gluten-free stations, et cetera. The second stage of this, was reaching out to colleges and universities to say, hey, can you actually really bring this information to life? And so, so far we've had 40 colleges and universities that have taken the time to add that sort of information to really go into a level of detail. If I'm a student, what kind of access to variety do I have? How do you approach training of your staff? How often does that happen?

What access to accommodations do I have and how do I go about that process? And so, you know, we're continuing to look for schools to grab a hold of their listings and so they can really add that personalized information that I think ultimately students want. The last piece of that is of course reviews from current students and their families because ultimately that's what I hear a lot. Okay, I want to hear like what's it really really like for you know a student out there and so we're still seeking more and more reviews from students or parents about their college experience because ultimately I think there's a ton of value for that for prospective students.

Joshua Miller (08:56)

Yeah.

I love that. So I love the fact that it's electronic and it's a living, breathing source instead of just being stagnant. when we, the place that I was at, when we really started expanding our options, was like, it was printed material, a little bit of social media, which obviously social media gets lost and old very quickly. So it's like, all right, now we have to constantly recreate these printed materials and a full blown website. Everyone doesn't have access to the website to make

updates there, so it's very hard to make those updates. This is like an easy to use platform where someone on the administration side of the food service segment, the food service department on campus can easily have a place where they can keep information live and updated. That's what I love about it because going through that pain of redesigning and reprinting and redistributing, it's all the time, all the time.

Nicole (09:46)

Thanks.

And things change all the time, right? In this, all the time in this business. one thing that's been really important to me is to both keep it free for colleges and universities, right? I didn't want that to be a barrier for them to get through. And then also for students and their families, because I really want to make sure and again, be the educator in me, make sure that it's accessible to everyone. And then on the user end, you know, similarly to what you were describing, really wanted it to function like a real directory, right? So depending on where you are in your college search, if I'm a kid just starting out, I might say, all right, I'm looking for a large public university in the Northeast. Let me see what schools there have. And you can filter it that way. Or I know I want, a...private school in New York that, and I'm only willing to go somewhere that has a gluten-free dining hall or gluten-free stations. And so you can filter it that way. If you're at a different point in your journey and you're saying, hey, I'll use my alma mater, Boston College. I want to know what Boston College has to offer. You can type that school in and get the information that way. So there's a couple of different ways that you can access the directory, trying to mirror the real life needs of kiddos out there in various stages of the process.

Joshua Miller (11:14)

All right, cool. All right, so let's take a quick dive through the actual website. I think this is great for people to actually see it and take advantage of the fact that this is a video podcast as well. So let's have you walk through it and just kind of show us the ropes a little bit.

Nicole (11:27)

Sure, absolutely. First, let me show this little donate button on the side there. probably the easiest place to start is this drop down menu for college and universities. And this is a place where you can go to search for college, look at recent reviews, and then I'll show you soon college verified profiles. It's also the place where if college kiddos or their parents are seeing this, please go click on review a college. It takes literally like two minutes to do the review. So that would be wonderful.

All right, we wanted this to function like a real search engine. There's a couple different ways you can use this. You can search for a college, which I'll show you. This is a great place where you can go to review a college. Hint, hint, it only takes about two minutes to go in. If we have kiddos or parents either in college or recently graduated that are hearing this. You can also review recent reviews and then I'll talk about these college verified profiles in a second. But let's go to search for a college. All right, and so you see it brings up our whole directory. And let's say that I want to go to a school that I'm only willing to go to a place that has gluten-free stations. I want to know I can eat safely and I want to go to a large university. So I can go down.

Press submit, and it's going to pull up all of the schools that we have in our database. And you can see there's Boston College, my alma mater with a couple reviews. And it will pull up all the schools in our database that meet that criteria. Let's take a look at some of those reviews. Boston College, I know has some very positive reviews. So you could go in and click on the reviews. And just to show you.

They do an overall rating, but then we also have these other categories, safety, variety, taste, accessibility, and accommodations, because we know that's also very important. And then a little bit of a voiceover there from the students. But let's say you're at a different part of your journey and you know what school that you want to look for. You might go ahead and say, let's go with Syracuse. Search.

Joshua Miller (13:16)

Love it.

Nicole (13:28)

a few schools in Syracuse pop up and I can go into Syracuse directly, right, without doing the filters and get the information here.

Joshua Miller (13:38)

Awesome.

Nicole (13:38)

Syracuse is a great, yeah it is, it's very, I believe it's very user friendly. Syracuse is a really great example here because they've taken the time to what we call claim their listing and provide a lot of that detailed information. So you have that link and these links work, you have that link right there that you can find the information directly from the school, some general information about the school, and then this really detailed information about things about safe handling protocols.

these different courses like working with MenuTrinfo there, how many of the dining centers, their approach, how they get accommodations, their approach to cross-contact, et cetera. And then, you know, a little blurb there. So it's really meant to be something that can be useful and helpful for students. also have, one of the things I would just love to draw your attention to in addition to that donate button is we have this shop tab. And so one of the ways that we've been working to keep this free for everyone is partnering with various small businesses to...work together and the goal is to uplift those small businesses, have something actually nice for our community like various care packages and so on and so forth and then it helps us fundraise so a percentage goes to us and so we have everything from you know gluten-free labeled things for those shared dorm spaces to little treats that you know you could send your gluten-free college kiddo or yourself and so it's also something you can check out. have a Facebook group as well Celiac College Guide Care is where we host all sorts of deals and fun things like that. And the idea is again to have it be something that our community actually would enjoy and also benefiting us and the business as well.

Joshua Miller (15:23)

Love that. Awesome. Tthat was awesome going through their website and seeing the functionality of a student or a parent going on there and searching things and even other colleges, searching other colleges with what they might or might not be doing. So very great resource. And one thing I have to say is the part that I loved is the aspect of saying what kind of safety measures are putting in place which is obviously the most important thing. you know, MenuTrinfo was a great partner in terms of training a resource partner in terms of getting people acclimated with what they need to do to provide safe food. you know, the flip side of that, unfortunately, which is constantly, I feel like the battle in the industry is, you know, how do we provide a good experience on top of safe?

Right, because yeah, you may have it be safe, but if it's the same menu item, day after day, week after week, that's not great. And that's one of the things that I can add value is being able to really look at not only the menus, but it really starts at the ingredients. And that's the challenge in the industry, feel like first and foremost, is understanding the options that are out there ingredient-wise that are alternatives that are safe for gluten-free and those with celiac disease. So I think that that is unfortunately an uphill battle, but I think that that is a great resource in being able to highlight who's doing it well. And again, people go on there, add your feedback, what you're experiencing, get your students on there. It's free marketing for you, right? To be able to have your school listed on there and have 10 students, 20 students go on there and say, we're doing a great job. Take them to that site and give them some freebies, right?

Nicole (17:10)

Yeah. And then we shout it out on our socials, right? So when I get something like cool in a new listing, sometimes I'll take screenshots, put it out there. When I get five star reviews, I share, we try and keep all that really positive again. You know, the goal is to uplift and spread that best practice. you know, it's great to talk to you because it's not always that you meet people that are in this work trying to, you know, in parallel improve, conditions, whether it's for students that are gluten-free or other food allergies and so I know that's a lot of where you're spending your time and energy as well, am I right?

Joshua Miller (17:44)

Yeah, absolutely. And the operations. And so again, I'm not really on the going through the operation and trying to recreate the wheel on the training side. Many Trinfo does a great job with that. And I obviously want to see them continue to do that. Where I come in is more so the culinary side of it in terms of saying, you know, okay, these are some things that we can do to make some tweaks to your menus, make some tweaks to your recipes. And it doesn't have to be recreating a wheel with that either, right? We can go through and look at existing recipes, if we find the right ingredients that you can procure, just substitutes. A lot of times it's one for one substitutes that we can find that can really uplift the variety and the quality of those foods that you're offering.

Nicole (18:29)

Yeah, I love that. And I think sometimes people also just not realizing that there are so many things out there that are naturally gluten free, right? You don't even have to, you can substitute or serve them rice, just don't contaminate it. Serve them potatoes. There's so many ways to do this that can meet kids' needs as well.

Joshua Miller (18:41)

Yeah. I can't, I just can't wrap my head around how much rice students eat in college.

Nicole (18:55)

the staple here in our house too as well. Because some of those, it's great that they have your guidance because some of those substitutions can be hit or miss. And it really hit home to me what you were saying also about the variety because that is something that I worry about.

Joshua Miller (19:04)

Yeah.

Nicole (19:11)

It's wonderful that places have gluten-free stations and often they tend to be allergen-free stations, right? And that makes sense. You know, it makes it easy for the college and university. They can keep it safe. And for a kid like my daughter, the vast majority of her protein comes from eggs, nuts, comes from things that, from soy, from tofu, right? Comes from things that might not be available in those stations. And so I think there's continued work to do to figure out, you know, that might be step one. How do we in step two?

You know, parse out some of those things so kids can have both nutritious but also delicious meals, right? Things that they're gonna wanna have.

Joshua Miller (19:45)

Yeah, for sure. And I've done the practice of finding that ingredient alternative to making a recipe that doesn't sacrifice quality for the mass majority and just serving it to everyone. It just happens to be that it's gluten free, but it's on a station that anybody and everybody usually goes to.

Nicole (19:58)

Right.

Joshua Miller (20:03)

And I want to go back to that rice statement I said earlier. I can't believe how much rice students eat in college. So I'm not sure if a lot of schools are doing this. Something to consider is rice cookers, right? Because it helps maintain the quality. And it was in such high demand that a lot of places just said we should just have it all day, every day. And the best way to do that is in a rice cooker. Commercial.

Nicole (20:07)

Yes.

Hmm.

And what do they have like? And what do they have like? commercial they have like humongous rice cookers. that what happened? Yeah, this is a whole different world for me, so I'll learn. Yeah.

Joshua Miller (20:31)

yeah, they have commercial rice cookers and you can have one going and another one cooking if you need it, but it helps maintain that quality because obviously if you let rice just sit in a warmer for hours and hours, it's not going to be great quality, right? So those are the best tool. Unfortunately, they do pull a lot of power, so you have to kind plan it out and make sure you get the right power to wherever you're going to store it at, but it's a great option to have nonetheless.

Nicole (21:01)

Well, and I think that's the sort of thing, right? And my belief and part of why I'm doing this is that schools want to do right by kids, right? I don't think anybody is in, you know, school dining services to harm kids or to not make it a good experience for them. Like sometimes it is just a matter of expanding, you know, either learning or seeing what other places are doing or getting those sort of tricks from someone like you. And so I do truly believe that in my heart and that hopefully these kind of work you're doing, the kind of work we're doing is the sort of thing that really can make an impact.

Joshua Miller (21:35)

All right, so let's talk about accommodations, right? What options are out there for accommodating students with celiac disease on these college campuses?

Nicole (21:34)

It really varies school to school, right? And that's part of why this was starting, hearing that kids were being held to meal plans where they weren't able to eat safely. But that sort of thing is evolving. And so one of the things we do have on the website is that free accommodations guide. And it gives some guidance of the types of things students might be able to ask for. So in some cases, the best thing a student is going to be able to do is try to get, for example, to get housing where they have something like a kitchenette to be able to prepare their own food. students have successfully been able to get a car on campus, for example, so they could go out and access food. There are things like being able to have certain things in your dorm room, and it sometimes has an academic impact. And so making sure that you have documented that you're going to be excused for, you know, being late to class if you're not feeling well and things like that. One of my favorite ones that I didn't have in the original version and learned about along the way is there are some schools that allow students to request to live near the gluten-free dining hall or the place that best accommodates gluten-free dinings. Right? Think about it. know, college kids are college kids, right? You know, if you're, if where you can eat safely is all the way across campus,

Joshua Miller (22:41)

Mm. wow. That's new for me too. Yeah, that's great. don't get me started. Yeah.

Nicole (23:07)

your friends aren't going with you, right? And you might not go yourself. And so part of it is this idea of like, we also don't want our kiddos to be isolated as much. you know, so how do you, you know, ask for it, try it, why not? It doesn't hurt to ask, right? Maybe you can get dining near there. And so your, you know, college buddies who like to just roll out of bed and go to eat might be more likely to come with you. You know, that sort of thing is the type of thing we have in there. And we're, you know, I learn things all the time and that gets amended. But the idea is that hopefully it would be helpful to people.

Joshua Miller (23:26)

Okay. for sure, and some of these campuses are huge. And at the same time, it doesn't take much for a student to feel discouraged from taking a walk. So it might not look too bad for us, but for students, they're like, I'm not walking that 50 yards. Absolutely not.

Nicole (23:48)

Yeah, yeah, on a weekend. Yeah, they're not trying to pull up to the place all the way

Joshua Miller (23:55)

and going back to the impact and advocacy. So one thing that I am a huge proponent on, and I've said this before and I'll say it again, which is having your team, right? You can do all the training in a row. You have all the great quality in a row. That doesn't mean you're gonna get the buy-in from every single person that is having a touch point with food that needs to go to someone with, whether it's celiac or any other allergy. One of the biggest impacts on me personally was having a conversation with someone that they had celiac and they were having issues with some of the foods that we were preparing and in their defense, we weren't doing great at the time, right? This is in very beginning stages of me getting exposed to this. And I was like,

Nicole (24:15)

Hmm.

Sure, it's a learning experience

Joshua Miller (24:39)

wow, I was like, I cannot believe we're so focused on what the health department comes in and looks for and focuses on that we've lost track of what about the people that have allergies or intolerances, right? What are we doing to help them? What are we doing to make sure that food is safe? And having that conversation with someone that had a direct impact, I definitely changed the lens scope for me. And every single...

Every single college, every single university has a food service, welcome back meeting at the beginning of the year. How powerful would it be if they had someone with an allergy or intolerance or celiac come in and just speak for five minutes? This is the impact that it has on me. Thank you for what you're doing. Or if they're new, I'm looking forward to enjoying the great food you guys are offering that are safe for me. Just having that personal piece kind of slide in in front of people that may not normally take it seriously, I think is a great opportunity as well.

Nicole (25:38)

I love that. you know, that is part of what we encourage, right, is for students to speak up and advocate and have those conversations that it sounds like made such an impact on you. They should always register with their disability office, for example, and get in contact with food services. And again, sometimes motivating college students to do this can be can be tricky, but that's definitely the recommendation. And there are some schools.

 that are putting things in, I believe Boston College, Syracuse, things like buddy programs where they're actually matching kids up with, know, an upperclassman who has, you know, the same, let's say, dietary restriction. And so hopefully seeing more and more of that because I do think that connection and those conversations I agree with you are so powerful.

Joshua Miller (26:21)

That's awesome. So in terms of what's next, what's next for you, what's next for the Celiac guide, how can listeners support your mission to make college life safer for students with Celiac?

Nicole (26:34)

Thanks for asking. you know, there's a few things. One is just helping to get the word out, right? And so a lot of prospective students and families just don't know about us yet. And we haven't necessarily gotten through to every college. And so whether it's helping to encourage a college or university you have a relationship with to take the time to enter the information or whether it is sharing this information with either current students and families for reviews or prospective ones, that's always helpful.

We are always looking for financial support. are a nonprofit. We are looking to keep this free and accessible. so donations are always certainly appreciated. And of course, you can do that through shopping, through all of our cool stuff that we have there. And we're always looking for suggestions and information. If you know a school that's doing something really well, shoot it my way and we'll throw some spotlights out there. And so, you know, we're definitely all in this together, more as more as far as I think information and folks coming together to share best practice.

Joshua Miller (27:32)

Absolutely.

Yeah, that is great. that is something everyone should definitely consider. And speaking of, how can people connect with you and with the Celiac College Guide to support? Obviously, you have the website or any other channels you would like to offer for direct contact.

Nicole (27:49)

Sure. Well, you can always reach out to me. It's Nicole at CeliacCollegeGuide.org. Our website is www.celiaccollegeguide.org. And we are on Facebook. It is The Celiac College Guide. That's our page. And then Celiac College Guide Cares is our group. And we have an Instagram as well. You can find links to those on our website as well,

Joshua Miller (28:13)

Awesome. Thank you.

All right, well, thank you, Nicole, for taking the time to have this great conversation with us and with myself today. I appreciate all the work that you're doing in the Celiac College Guide, what it's doing for students and prospective students going into the college world. So thank you very much. I appreciate that. And to everyone else, I'm your host. Until next time, signing off.