Ever wondered how many calories are in that greasy hamburger from By George? A resolution passed last week by the ASUW Student Senate supports a campus food nutrition Web site to provide nutrition and serving size information about the food served on campus.

The NetNutrition program implemented last year at Purdue University was the inspiration for the legislation.

“You can find all types of nutrition information online for restaurants, but you can’t find the information for the hamburgers downstairs [in the HUB] or sandwiches in McMahon and 1101 — and it doesn’t make sense to me,” said co-sponsor Rob Barnum-Reece, the ASUW director of operations. “It would be minimal effort for HFS.”

The authors of the resolution commended Purdue University and requested that the resolution be forwarded to Paul Brown, the director of Housing and Food Services (HFS); Eric Godfrey, the vice provost for Student Life; Lauren Sterling, ASUW’s Student Health Consortium director; Jenny Hahn, ASUW’s director of faculty, administration and academic affairs; Hall Health Director David Dugdale; and the student representatives on the Hall Health Advisory Board.

“I live off-campus — I’m a commuter — but I eat lunch here [in the HUB] every day,” Barnum-Reece said. “And most of my co-workers eat one meal a day at the HUB as well.”

HFS has been compiling nutrition information since last May and plans to launch a pilot NetNutrition program at Conibear Shellhouse, the dining hall for athletes, by this autumn.

“The process will take about three to six years to fully implement [at all campus dining facilities],” said Yung Cheung, the food services systems specialist for HFS.

Barnum-Reece was not aware of this when he agreed to co-sponsor the resolution.

“The key is, this is a resolution of student opinion,” he said. “Maybe the legislation has to be altered in light of this information, but I still think it’s relevant because it promotes a culture of awareness. It’s great that they’re making progress on it.”

NetNutrition has been a massive undertaking in terms of finances and labor, Yung said.

The first step of the project, which began last May, was to collect the nutrition information for each ingredient. This meant communicating with more than 30 different vendors and manually entering the information into a CBORD (a provider of software for food and nutrition service management) program.

The next step, which has been underway during the past six months, is to compile all the recipes.

“For example, if you have a grilled panini sandwich that has chicken, pesto and tomato, you have to physically get nutrition info for each ingredient,” said Storm Hodge, the acting assistant director of dining services for HFS.

As of now, about 50 percent of recipes have been collected and entered into the system.

“We’re not putting out information that’s incorrect,” Hodge said. “Each recipe is tested and rewritten, and if we hurry, we won’t be able to give accurate information.”

HFS is working on this project to fulfill its own standards but also to live up to industry and legal standards.

“We are committed to providing nutritional information; it’s what the industry expects, and laws are being passed, so we want to be on the cutting edge,” Hodge said.

Dugdale applauded the resolution, saying that it would be especially helpful for students with dietary restrictions like diabetes.

“It’s hard to argue against having more information, but how large a population of students would be measurably impacted?” Dugdale said.