Hannah Atkins has no relationship to the famous dietician, however, like dietician Dr. Robert C. Atkins, she, too, is an advocate for the consumption of meat.
"I'm a big poultry person. If you have one hard boiled egg for breakfast, you get calcium, minerals and the highest quality protein you can get," said Atkins (sophomore-animal science), as she passed out beef jerky and cheese sticks to interested students.
The Block and Bridle, Dairy Science, Poultry Science clubs and Earth House collaborated with outside organizations to sponsor the Meat-In Day yesterday, which Block and Bridle treasurer Chris Molinaro (junior-animal science) said is a response to the the Great American Meatout Day, which is today.
The Great American Meatout Day seeks to educate communities and ask people to abstain from meat "at least for a day," according to its Web site, meatout.org.
Dining commons on-campus will offer some meatless entrees today to "show students there are delicious meatless entrees out there, and it doesn't always have to have meat to be good," Director of Residential Dining Lisa Wandel said.
Students participating in Meat-In Day stood outside the HUB-Robeson Center and at Findlay Commons, handing out beef and venison jerky sticks, cheese sticks and informational brochures.
Students passed out nearly all of the 2,000 beef jerky sticks, 2,000 cheese sticks and 300 venison sticks they procured for the day.
"We're just trying to encourage students to put meat and dairy in their diet," Molinaro said.
While passing out the foods and nutritional pamphlets, Alex Lauffer (junior-agricultural and extension education) said many jobs depend on the meat and dairy industry.
"Our jobs are pretty much dependent on whether people buy these products. We just really want people to understand that it's healthy and a more natural source [of nutrition] than other food sources," Lauffer said.
"It has the nutrients, minerals and calcium to begin with; we don't have to add it."
Even though people avoid meat because of cholesterol and fat fears, processed foods usually have more trans-fat, cholesterol and partially hydrogenated oil than animal products, Atkins said.
Some vegetarians said they were accepting of the event.
"As long as they are only encouraging it and allowing people to make their own decisions, it's not really a problem," said Venkatesh Hariharan (junior-bioengineering), a vegetarian.
Jillian Grieshaber (junior-marketing), who is not a vegetarian, accepted the free food and said it didn't matter to her if people chose to be vegetarian or not as long as they didn't "force their views on other people."
