Photo illustration by Marcin Rutkowski/The Daily

Ingredient specialists are available on campus to guide and teach OU students with food allergies to make healthy eating choices around campus dining areas.

“The students can utilize the Nutrition Calculator to plan their nutrition intake,” said Lauren Royston, Housing and Food Services spokeswoman.

The Nutrition Calculator can calculate students’ calories, fat and carbohydrates, according to the Housing and Food Services Web site. Students can plan meals ahead of time or review what they have previously eaten to stay on track.

Dorothy Flowers is the general manager of marketing and nutritional analysis for Housing and Food Services, and the ingredient specialist on campus. She works with students with food allergies to help them choose what they can or cannot eat within the dining options on campus. She also maintains the Nutrition Calculator database in the Housing and Food Services Web Site.

“The Nutrition Calculator is the tool for the customers,” Flowers said. “They can look up the food offered at the operations on campus and determine, or put together the best healthiest menus for themselves to plan out throughout the week.”

The Nutrition Calculator is broken down into three steps, the Web site states. First, users can choose a meal and restaurant, then choose a food category and finally look at the meal they have chosen. With this tool, users can configure a meal, search the food and look up the ingredients of the dish they are interested in.

Flowers said it is important for students with food allergies to use the Nutrition Calculator to maintain healthy eating habits and keep track of what they eat throughout the day so they can stay healthy and recognize what kind of food they are allergic to, if any.

“I am allergic to peanuts and it is severe. I can’t be around them, be exposed to them, touch them, eat them, or I will go into anaphylactic shock,” said Lyndsey Ingham, University College freshman.

Anaphylactic shock is a serious allergic reaction and some of the symptoms include dizziness, loss of consciousness, labored breathing, swelling of the tongue, blueness of the skin and if severe it can even cause death, according to medicinenet.com. An immediate emergency treatment is required for this type of shock.

Ingham said she had to make the decision of moving out of her dorm room in Couch Center because of her roommate not respecting her allergic reactions to peanuts. If she had known the ingredient specialist earlier she would have made wiser decisions about what she eats and her residence life.

“It would be nice to know what contains peanuts and what not on campus dining options because I just had to guess whenever I had a chance to eat on campus so that I am not exposed to it,” Ingham said.

“The only way to not have allergic reaction is to not have the food a person is allergic to and recognize what is going on with their body because the allergic reaction can take a day or two to appear,” Flowers said.

The Laughing Tomato in the Oklahoma Memorial Union has some healthier options compared to some of the other dining places on campus because it mostly uses the natural and organic products from local farms such as Peach Crest, Flowers said.

Flowers said every year during March and April she goes to different operations to inform the students about healthier dining options within Food Services as well as to talk about food allergies.