Smitha Haneef, the India-born director of campus dining at Princeton University’s campus serves more than three million meals a year to its students through their residential dining halls, campus-wide athletic banquets, food truck, reunion activities and a host of other campus events is Princetons top chef
The Ivy League university has released a vimeo entitled, “Princeton Campus Dining Nourishes People And Planet” that featured Haneef extolling the virtues of campus dining and how the university cares for its students through healthy “plant forward” menus. The university’s student group, Greening Dining, partners with Haneef to “foster a culture of health and sustainability throughout campus food programs”.
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“In my experience, a healthy meal is something that has lots of plants and legumes and beans and grains, that when you eat, you feel nourished and ready to go to take on whatever the next goal is in your life,” Haneef said in the vimeo.
Haneef’s love for cooking, catering and food management dates back to the time when the Orissa native lived in Hyderabad, studying for a degree from the National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology. After school Haneef, who is a graduate from Osmania University, has worked at various five-star hotels and restaurants in India before moving to the U.S. in 2000.
“All along I have worked in hotel management and food-related jobs which, needless to say, I have a deep passion for,” Haneef said.
“On our campus, there are students from all different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and naturally their culinary habits, their food preferences are not the same. Our goal is to cater to their tastes, keeping in mind their overall health and nutritional requirements,” she said.
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“The millennial preference is like ‘keep me nourished on-the-go.’ It’s a very demanding lifestyle with longer days, and through the day, they want to have an exciting meal, which means giving them daily nourishment but exposing them to different trends,” Haneef had said in the Princeton Alumni Weekly in 2014, soon after joining Princeton as executive director of campus dining.
“My unflinching love and passion for service through food! After all, how we nourish and nurture our students is always at the core of my heart,” Haneef who lives in Princeton with her son, and husband, said.
“The way we nurture and nourish our students, is extremely important in higher education because we develop future world leaders. The students of today will be taking on leadership roles later in life.”
By Premji
