UTSA Roadrunner Café food vendor, Aramark kicked off a new campaign last week that makes healthy meal planning easier for UTSA students.
The Por Vida program offers students a wide range of food choices and flexible menus designed to make healthful meals easy to understand.
“It’s a great, great program,” Louis Keefe, Resident District Manager of Aramark Higher Education said.
Aramark made the program available to students two weeks before the official kick-off last week, and Keefe is excited to announce that the café served over 100 more Por Vida meals than he expected.
“That tells me that students are looking for better choices,” Keefe said.
To make a Por Vida meal, students can choose one entrée and two side items from a large selection of menu offerings precisely calculated not to exceed 700 calories and 23 grams of fat.
Bright red and yellow signs with a heart-shaped fork and spoon logo will designate all the daily Por Vida selections throughout the café. In addition to caloric and fat content, Por Vida meals contain no more that 0.5 grams of trans fat and limit sodium content to 750 mg. Fried foods are strictly prohibited.
Aramark, which serves between 1,300 and 1,400 UTSA students daily, was approached by program organizers last year to help formulate menus that meet the program’s standards. Kathy Shields, Chronic Disease Prevention Manager for the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, praised Aramark for their thorough menus and their eagerness to join forces to implement the Por Vida Program.