You can’t eat ice cream for dinner” is one of the phrases many hear growing up regarding our eating habits and how they should be balanced and nutritious. Coming to college marks the first time most people have the opportunity to fully control their diet, unless you go to Washington University. Instead of being explicitly told what to eat, the choices are limited. You can have choice, but only between what the University approves of. The University needs to improve the selection of junk food on campus instead of herding our choices according to what it deem to be right.

Take fried chicken, a comfort food to all and an American treasure. Taking the first bite into a hot, perfectly seasoned and sufficiently unhealthy wing will make the world seem right. At Wash. U. your choices are chicken tenders and the odd fried chicken day at the comfort food station in Bear’s Den. Meanwhile, there are more salad options than engineering majors and minors. I get it, a lot of people want as many healthy options as possible, but why limit the availability of the other spectrum of the health food scale?

Fried chicken isn’t the only casualty in the University’s effort to force us to eat healthy. Ice cream sizes are limited to a pint, the candy selection is dwarfed by energy bars, and the pizza is as uninspired as naming things after George Washington. Seriously, he gets a state, the capital, multiple colleges and high schools, and, not one, but two pieces of our currency. Where is the love for John Adams? He was one of the smartest presidents and the only one of the first five to not own slaves. Just something to think about.

Some might ask, why does it matter if Wash. U. doesn’t have good junk food when you can just walk off campus and get some? It matters because to have a complete community, you need junk food. After long, hard and stressful days, many people love to reward themselves with some fantastically delicious food that isn’t green. Here, you are handcuffed. Want decent pizza? Then you have to order or walk to the Loop. Want Southern comfort food? Then hopefully the comfort food station matches your desire, or you’re in for some research. And back to the American treasure of fried chicken that isn’t in strip form (tenders are just adult chicken strips). Then, you need to get out of the gentrified bubble that is Wash. U. and visit real St. Louis for your fix.

College is supposed to be about freedom. Freshmen are given the freedom to pick their major coming into school, and I would like that to be the case with our food. I want the option to eat healthy, but I also want the option to eat as much unhealthy food as possible. I want to say my school gives me the options of whatever kale super food bulls— that’s hot at the moment as well as a pizza slice that can make even the most stressed student remember what joy feels like. If we really want to take care of ourselves, we need to not only feed our minds, but also that special part of our soul that wants us to eat until we’re 600 pounds and have a TV show about us.