University of Oregon
IN-4: Innovation 4

The UO has created a Nutrition Calculator to allow customers to search for food options that are vegetarian, vegan, made without gluten, organic, and contain certain particular common allergens. This helps guide students, staff, faculty and the community to visit dining locations that have foods that meet their nutritional needs. This tool promotes sustainable thinking as it gives a sense of types of ingredients that we need to sustain healthy lifestyles. UO Dining Services uses the following criteria local, qualitity of service and food, and cost to choose its partners. Furthermore, UO prioritizes organic, GMO-Free, Sustainable, Fair Trade, Seafood Watch, Humane, Third-Party Certified products. These choices are an extension of promoting thoughtful purchases that are healthly for people and the planet. The UO spends $750,000 annually on locally grown or produced products through 50 local growers and producers. This includes Direct Farmer purchasing agreements for over 18,000 lbs of blueberries, strawberries, apples, and pears. Local dairies supply products free of antibiotics and bovine growth hormones. Coffee is Fair-Trade Certified and tuna is sourced locally using sustainable pole caught method. A local producer supplies campus with 18,000 lbs of tofu and 1,500 lbs of tempeh annually. PETA awarded UO an A on their Vegan Rating in 2015. Foods are made from scratch not from cans which reduces waste and basic staples such as pinto beans, black beans, rice, quinoa, and produce are organic. The Nutritional Calculator helps students, staff, and faculty to understand this wide variety of products available to them and helps them to be educated consumers.

450 unique users a week on average.