The University of Oklahoma's Housing and Food Services realized they had an image problem.

Every year on customer satisfaction surveys, Food Services would get great ratings on everything except for health.

That freshman 15 just kept coming.

Housing and Food Services will open The Laughing Tomato Aug. 18 to serve healthy alternatives in the Oklahoma Memorial Union.

The restaurant will serve pre-made dishes that focus on being healthy, using local products with no added hormones and providing vegetarian and vegan foods. It will take the place of Taco Mayo in the food court, next to Quiznos, Wong Key, Chick-Fil-A and Sbarro, and be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Housing and Food services decided to launch the restaurant to provide the healthy food options students wanted. They had tried other means to get students to eat better. Housing and Food Services has been providing healthy options at its restaurants for years and is completely trans-fat free.

Last year H--FS launched a marketing campaign to let people know about the healthy eating options on campus.

But to no avail. At the end of the year, the surveys showed that students still didn't think OU's food services were healthy.

"It really made very little impact," said Kevin Barker, director of retail operations for Housing and Food Services. He said he blames the easy availability of unhealthier food on campus. Customers focus on those foods and don't notice the healthier options, like at Couch Cafeteria, he said.

"You can eat so healthy there," he said of the cafeteria. "We have a huge salad bar, but it's right next to a huge sweet bar."

And sometimes salads aren't as exciting as fried foods. For example, Cate A La Carte has healthy wraps available, in addition to hot foods. But Barker said the items that are consistently the best sellers are macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy and chicken strips.

So this restaurant will be different. Everything will be a healthy choice.

"We wanted to take away where they have to figure out what's healthy," Barker said.

The Laughing Tomato will serve nutritious soups, salads, wraps and tomato dishes with locally grown tomatoes.

The dishes are all new to Housing and Food Services, and some are a bit original. One that T.J. Carter, manager of Laughing Tomato, said will probably be the best seller is called "Best Date Ever." It's a wrap with peanut butter, honey, dates and banana.