Joleen Ong's favorite breakfast at The College of New Jersey is an organic burrito stuffed with tofu and tomato, washed down with a cup of yerba mate tea grown on a farm in Ecuador.

Her dining choices two years ago were far more limited.

"There was French toast, Tater Tots, pancakes with nasty syrup and scrambled eggs with cheese," said the 21-year-old senior from River Edge. "It was good, but it wasn't good for you."

The generation that grew up on Whole Foods diets and graduated from high school cafeterias forced to ban cupcakes and soda is hitting campus dining halls -- with predictable results.

Nutrition savvy students with an interest in organic, locally grown foods are pressing colleges for changes. And they are getting them.

Schools nationwide are offering students more healthy menu options, including vegetarian and vegan dishes, sushi, organic juices and locally grown fruits and vegetables. Some schools have their own organic mini-farms. Trans fat has been stripped from menus, and nutrition labels are plastered across dining halls. In some places, schools offer convenient pre-balanced dishes measured down to the calorie.

"More than any other generation, students have a heightened expectation of the diversity of food they're offered and where it comes from, where it's produced and how it's shipped," said Jodi Smith, marketing director for the National Association of College & University Food Services, with 650 member schools and 425 food vendors.

Organic foods can increase prices appreciably, so they tend to be offered separately to students who pay more for them.

One of the nation's largest college food providers, Aramark, which serves Rider, Monmouth and Rutgers-Newark universities, has seen its sales of organic food on campuses increase 20 percent per year for the past five years. Company research shows 60 percent of college students consider healthy options to be important.

"Today's college students want fresh and healthy menu options without being bombarded by fad diets," said Jenifer Bland-Campbell at Aramark.

And it's not just fresh vegetables. Sodexho, with some 900 college dining clients, recently partnered with American Italian Pasta Company to serve whole grain and Omega-3 enriched pastas.

At TCNJ this semester, corn, tomatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkins, strawberries and cranberries, all shipped from local farms, are on display in baskets and burlap bags at the new "farmers market' area of the dining hall.

"We have seen 100 percent higher fruit and vegetable consumption over last year," said John Higgins, the general manager for TCNJ's dining services.

The college also is offering more organic products at its Fair Grounds snack kiosk and has introduced a new "Balanced Way" program that offers students a meal choice each day that has fewer than 600 calories, 30 percent or less fat, and at least three grams of fiber.

One lunch menu last week, for example, included braised pork loin with basmati rice, broccoli and yellow squash, or margharita pizza and melon salad with yogurt dressing.

"It's designed to be easy to understand and focuses on a non-diet approach," Higgins said. "Since the roll-out three weeks ago we have seen an incredible shift in students' eating habits."

Ong, who is a vegetarian and president of the college's chapter of Amnesty International, is among those who lobbied for changes -- both healthier foods and assurances imported food was grown using fair-labor practices.

"A lot of foods have emulsifiers and sweeteners," Ong said. "All the ingredients at Fair Grounds are ingredients you'll find in your kitchen. You can pronounce them."

At Drew University in Madison, students went to the college president last year with a list of demands for the new food vendor, Sodexho. The number one criteria: detailed, accessible nutritional information, including the percentage of foods shipped within 100 miles and certified organic.

As a result, this school year the cafeteria is supplied with plums, butternut squash, pumpkins, apples and other produce from about 25 New Jersey farms. There also is whole wheat pizza and three or four vegetarian salads daily.

For Drew students, who pay $1,675 per semester for a food plan, choice can be more important than volume. Joe Coyle, a 19-year-old student from Hightstown, said having a variety of vegetarian dishes on the menu daily is important.

"It's really easy to go and have coke and ice cream for dinner every night," Coyle said. But because he's a runner, he hits the salad bar more often.

"It's important for me to eat healthy, because if I don't get in the right balance of nutrients and proteins and carbohydrates, it will negatively affect my performance in cross country meets," he said.

That doesn't mean students don't still like greasy French fries, macaroni and cheese or other artery-clogging campus favorites.

"On the one hand we're going through 8,000 pieces of fruit a week," said Heather Muhlenberg, a district manager for Sodexho who oversees Drew's dining services, "while on the other hand taco night had to stay, with the refried beans and the cheese."

Centenary College in Hackettstown is building a new kitchen, dining hall and café in a new multi-purpose center to open in 2009. It plans to roll out a high-end culinary program called "Pulse on Dining" that will stress fresh, healthy ingredients.

Holly Hart, a representative of Chartwells Educational Dining Services, which offers the program at eight of the 220 colleges it serves, said students will be able to get a meal in an open kitchen setting and watch as staff prepare their food.

"You can sit and watch your meal being made to order," Hart said. "We took the mystery out of mystery meat."

Ana M. Alaya may be reached at aalaya@starledger.com or (973) 392-4258.

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