Lately I have been hearing a lot about how important it is for us to be receiving healthy nutrition from food. Last night I attended the Woods Lecture by Michael Pollan, author of novels such as "The Omnivore’s Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food." He gave humorous but beneficial “rules” to navigate the food system such as “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother would not recognize as food.”

His speech made me think of my own nutrition and re-think whether or not the food I am eating here at Butler is healthy. Looking back on experiences had with the meal items here along with research, the answer is "no."

The majority of Butler students have the opportunity to eat in three dining halls: the Marketplace at Atherton Union, Residential College dining room and C-Club.

My basic dining routine consists of lunch at Resco and dinner at Atherton during the week, with breakfast at Resco when I have early classes. If I miss the Atherton dinner hours I will eat at C-Club but the menu consists of the same things every day, plus everything there begins to taste the same after awhile.

Lately, my friends and I have had less-than-pleasant experiences with the food, specifically the food offered in Atherton. In the past month we have encountered a loose hair or two in both the pasta and the ice cream, moldy bread that the employees failed to remove after being informed of it and over-ripe fruit. We also cannot forget the broccoli that contained mold or the macaroni and cheese that contained an interesting white substance.

I have also been informed of foreign objects being found in Butler food -- pencil lead in ice cream and a plastic cap from the end of an icing tube in a cup of chocolate pudding. And just when you think that it cannot get any worse, my friend put honey mustard dressing on his salad at lunch last week only to find that the dressing was rancid. The last thing we need here is food poisoning.

There is much more to this than unpleasant-tasting food here. The weekly menus are available on www.campusdish.com along with the so-called nutrition facts. A simple glance at several items proved that the food here is anything but nutritious. Take beef ravioli, a common favorite -- a serving alone contains 455 calories and an astounding 929 milligrams of sodium!

In order to burn off the calories from one serving, and I know for a fact that I sometimes eat more than the serving size, one would need to exercise for about 40 minutes on the elliptical at the HRC or run about three miles on the track.

You would think that at a school where we pay up to $40,000 per year to attend we would have healthy, tasteful food.

I believe the food here is anything but healthy. In fact, I think the safest thing to eat would be a piece of fruit, but then again it may be spoiled! Although there are somewhat healthier alternatives such as a build your own sandwich and a salad bar, one cannot live off of this food for the entire time at Butler.

If we want to maintain good nutrition throughout the school year something needs to be done in order to create a healthier dining experience for all.