By Ashely Bradley/ne news editor
Mothers always tell their children to eat breakfast because it is the most important meal of the day. NE Campus health services and ECI Food Services want students to listen to their mothers.
This semester, the two have teamed up to promote better health when it comes to eating in the mornings.
“Breakfast Brought to You” is a mobile cart that will travel around NE Campus carrying food. With prices ranging from 75 cents to $2.25, the cart offers breakfast burritos, breakfast sandwiches, boiled eggs, bagels, yogurt parfaits, fruit, coffee and much more.
Pat Marling, health services coordinator, said she came up with the idea and thought it would help students with stress and health problems.
“I always get calls about students who are feeling faint or dizzy, and it’s always because they don’t eat the right foods. Students should be eating protein in the mornings, not just a Pop-Tart,” she said. “Pop-Tarts have no nutritional value.”
Celeste Neill, manager of the NE cafeteria, took the cart out the first day and said the response was positive, though she ran into some problems.
“Bless her heart,” Marling said. “The cart broke down. And what did Celeste do? She pushed the golf cart all the way across campus.”
Though the cart wasn’t in working condition the first day, students purchased 75 percent of what Neill had anticipated.
“Students were even asking if we were going to be around after their class for lunch,” Neill said.
She and Marling have discussed selling lunch foods on the cart but want to see if the cart becomes more popular for breakfast.
“It should do nothing but grow,” Neill said. “We saw a huge need, and we knew this idea could benefit everyone.”
Marling said that the idea was something she put on her year’s goal list and is happy to see it being fulfilled.
She and Neill said they just want to do things to make students’ lives easier. She said students who eat breakfast not only feel better, but do better academically as well.
The cart is out 7:45-10 a.m. near NTAB, NHSC and NACB. Homestyle breakfasts made by Neill and her staff are also available in the cafeteria during the same hours.
Cafeteria employee Chris Rodriguez drove the cart out on its third day and said he and other students thought the idea was great because it’s more convenient than walking all the way across campus to get breakfast. He said the most popular items were the breakfast sandwiches.
“A lot of people like the bacon breakfast sandwich,” he said. “My favorite is the chicken breakfast sandwich.”
He said he thinks the prices are reasonable for how great the quality of food is.
