Students grabbed free fresh fruits and vegetables from tables at an event outside of the Health and Life Sciences Building on Wednesday.
The Office of Student Engagement partnered with the Health and Wellness Center and Hungry Harvest, a local food company, to organize the Wellness Wednesday event. To promote healthy eating, the staff offered students apples, pears, eggplant, snow peas, butter lettuce, leeks, watermelon juice and cucumber water, as well as cookbooks.
“[It’s] a way to promote good, healthy living on campus,” Bethany Tatro, the Wellness Wednesday event coordinator, said. “People can just come and get fruits, vegetables that they like.”
The Health and Wellness Center and OSE organize the event every month with a different theme each time.
On Oct. 2, the theme will be sleep. On Nov. 6, the event will focus on movement, and on Dec. 4, the centerpoint is relieving stress.
First-year American Sign Language student Eva Williams, who helped herself to some pears, eggplant, snow peas and a leek, said she will use her produce to prepare a soup.
“I saw on Instagram a potato leek soup,” Williams said. “I might do that. It’s soup season and I love soup.”
Second-year nursing student Elizabeth Eckert, who picked up an eggplant, leeks, snow peas and butter lettuce, said she has some recipes in mind.
“I love grilling eggplant and roasting it with a ton of olive oil and salt and [with the] butter lettuce, just maybe some salads with avocado and vinaigrette,” Eckert said. “I just talked to the woman over [in the stand who] gave me some good ideas for a potato leek soup.”
