Religion and Culture
Religion and Culture
As discussed earlier, the social aspect of foods is not limited to health, but many other factors including culture and religion. These are very important parts of our study of the foods around Brooklyn College because of the diversity of the students at Brooklyn College. Many people are limited to vegan, vegetarian, or kosher diets, and this can have a great effect on the food choices they make, and how available specific foods are to these students. In addition, many specific cultures tend to eat certain kinds of foods, and this can cause some students to develop specific tastes. The availability of these different tastes is important to allow all students to have food available that is not only healthy, but desirable and compliant with their specific needs.
Common Kosher Symbol
Not-so-common Halal Symbol
When studying the cultural and religious influences of food, it is important to understand the views of the vendor on this topic. Therefore, we asked the vendors how their specific products may or may not serve religious diets or cultural tastes. Their answers follow:
11) How do your products serve different religious diets and/ or cultural tastes?
| Applebee’s | Not answered. |
| Coffee Collective in Student Center | As of now, their products are not inaccessible to any religious diet – coffee is neither kosher nor non-kosher, really, but again, they are eager to expand and are certainly ready to take into consideration the various needs of students at BC. |
| Hot Bagels & Deli | I don’t. |
| Kosher Pizza in Cafeteria | We’re kosher, so we provide for both Jews and Muslims. |
| Popeyes | We serve non-pork products and ask prior to serving for preferences. |
| Subway | Okay, so, Indian and Pakistani people don’t like meat, and they like the veggie delight and veggie patties sandwiches. And if they ask, we can make changes to their specific sandwich order to their specific tastes. |
| Target | We’re exclusively Kosher. |
| Target Pizza Hut/ Food Area | We do have kosher foods. Everything isn’t pork; we try to be specific and allow everyone to have food that they can eat. We have turkey sandwich[s] and ham sandwich[s]. We have hot dogs that are beef and pork; we have cheese and pepperoni pizza. We serve pasta that has beef and we also serve pasta that has chicken. So we try and serve everyone as best we can. |
| White Castle | No kosher food right now. |
Many college campuses, including Brooklyn College have a great diverse mix of different cultures.
