Two University students still have a bitter taste in their mouths after finding out the dining halls were mislabeling some foods as vegan.

Ashley Braid, a junior from Richmond Hill, and Jason Lukich, a senior from Richmond Hill, discovered ingredients such as milk, eggs and cheese in products that were labeled by the dietary staff as vegan.

The two are members of a vegan awareness group, Speak Out for Species, and were upset when they found the food was mislabeled.

“We transferred to UGA and it had all this vegetarian stuff and it seemed really easy,” Lukich said in an interview Friday. “They said we had all these things to eat, and it’s like, not really, we actually have this tiny bit of things we can eat.”

Vegans do not eat dairy or meat products and generally avoid anything that comes from an animal.

The mislabeling occurred at the sales level, said Katherine Ingerson, food services dietician.

“We were buying Vegan Burgers from Morning Star, and they changed their recipe and ingredients,” she said in a phone interview Friday. Efforts to contact Morning Star for comment were unsuccessful as of press time Monday.

The dining halls cater to thousands of customers every semester, and in recent years, student trends have pushed the integration of more vegetarian and vegan options.

According to Ingerson, the dining hall gets its products through university auctions, and the lowest bidder wins.

“With the recession, a lot of vegan companies don’t [make vegan products] anymore,” she said. “It’s not profitable.”

The actual process of labeling the food in the dining halls at the University is a complicated one. As head dietician, Ingerson is in charge of the labeling of the foods.

She also has student workers who help her make photocopies of every new arrival, then the students type the information into a database where it is kept in storage.

But the problem seemed to be less of a human error, and more of a miscommunication.

“We constantly identify items that are vegan,” said J. Michael Floyd, University executive director of Food Services, in a phone interview on Friday. “The problem we deal with sometimes is that the manufacturer of the product has changed [the ingredients] and they don’t inform of us that.”

But personal student food choices aren’t the only issue at hand, there are also health concerns that arise through the mislabeling of food.

“There are definitely food allergies that can come into play,” Ingerson said.

Ingerson said the dietary staff examined the label and found it contained egg whites. The team then set out signs to inform vegan students of the changes. Braid and Lukich must not have seen the signs, Ingerson said.

For fall semester last year, the dining hall menu contained 12 items that were reformulated to incorporate vegan students.

“Since then, because of those students, [the products in question have] been labeled,” Ingerson said. “Before then, we just didn’t have enough interest [from the students] in whether it was vegan or not, so when they asked, we did it.”

Whether it’s for health, religious or animal cruelty reasons, the vegan trend is on the rise. Braid and Lukich attribute it to the increase in the “Going Green” campaigns that have seen popularity in the last decade.

For some, like Braid, it is about the animals.

“It was easy for me because I didn’t like a lot of meat,” she said. “I saw a video of a pig being slaughtered, and I just thought about it because I had never made the connection between what you see in the store and what that is.”

Yet for others, the reasons can be more about personal tastes.

“I was sitting at work at Cracker Barrel, flipping burgers, and I was like, ‘I don’t even want to eat this anymore,’” Lukich said.

Lukich also disputes some of the “modern myths” of tofu and its related products. “People think you can’t get all your protein, but it’s completely not true,” he said.

After Braid and Lukich noticed the items that were mislabeled, they decided to quit the University’s meal plan. Because of their unique situation, they were able to discontinue their plans without paying the $300 fine usually associated with doing so.

Still, they felt their concerns weren’t met by those in charge at the dining halls.

“J. Michael Floyd didn’t seem very concerned about the problem,” Braid said. “He told us to go talk to the dietician. That was November, and we couldn’t get off until the end of January.”