19/01/2010

Com Square begins offering Halal food

From December 2009, Tokai University has begun offering food that is permissible according to Islamic law, “Halal food,” at its Shonan campus cafeteria, Com Square.

The number of foreign exchange students at Tokai University has been increasing steadily each year, and approximately 100 of them come from Islamic countries. In order to better accommodate these students, the university set up a place of worship in building 15 since last year, and has been making efforts to try to accommodate their daily need. The offering of “Halal food” at Com Square is another one of these efforts. The Head Office of International Affairs, Tokai Univeristy (HIAT) began planning menu offerings from last year and received feedback from foreign exchange students and the various countries’ embassies.

The first offering was a healthy menu of an onion and cabbage based vegetable curry, to which tomatoes, various spices and basil paste were added. Because Halal food does not permit the use of pork or pork-based additives in the cooking process, the cafeteria staff had to conduct their own research. In addition to this Halal menu, all of the dishes available at Com Square are now labeled with the type of meats that they contain.

Uchida Hirohisa, Executive Director of the Tokai Institute of Global Education and Research (TIGER) says of this initiative, “Meals are very important parts of one’s daily life. We would like to continue broadening our offerings by taking our foreign exchange students’ suggestions into account.”