Cookie Dough Pucks, Melon Rinds, And The Missing Tray

We learn today, from the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), that university food service operations are feeling financial pressure from the rising cost of food.  How to make ends meet?  A number of ideas surfaced in the article - everything from cutting half an ounce of cheese from a slice of pizza to leaving the skin on chunks of honeydew melon.  Some schools are even baking from scratch rather than using "expensive pucks of pre-made cookie dough."  (And they wonder why college students play with their food?)

The smartest strategy of all, though, is simply making it tougher for students to carry the food to their tables.  Schools like Western Washington and Middlebury College are banishing the cafeteria tray.  Sure, a tray may be a convenient way to tote your Italian Noodle Casserole, salad, cookie, and Mr. Pibb, but do students really need all four?  Not if food service accountants have anything to say about these matters. 

To quote Woody Allen:

"Boy, the food in this place is really terrible.'"   "Yes, and such small portions."

Comments

[Belle Lettre]

I worry most for the kids on free lunch programs, since that's often the only good meal they have per day. I know, becaues I had state subsidized free lunches throughout elementary and middle school. I used to bring home whatever I didn't eat. You know kids who save half their lunch to eat later for dinner. I vaguely recall that we had "different" lunch tickets, although in my mixed-income/immigrant neighborhoods, it didn't matter so much in terms of stigma. But I am all for anonymous ticket free lunch programs.

The rising price of food, and its impact on low-income families and kids really worries me. I hate how people these days compare "chain restaurant food" to "cafeteria food." I want to ask them if they ever ate cafeteria food, and you know, it's better than no food.

[Daniel C.]

I worked for the cafeteria during my undergrad at KU. It was owned by a corporation of some kind (that also owned our bookstore and student union) and profits were supposed to go toward "helping students" in some way. The food services side alone raked in a healthy profit of $3 million my last year working for them. I would prefer they help students by letting them eat as much as they want instead of pocketing the cash.

[Belle Lettre]

I remember campaigns to make the college cafeteria at UCI less wasteful--or at least, what do we do with all of the leftover food? Can't we give it to the homeless? Can't we pool some of it into a food drive? The problem with college-age idealism is that we soon found out that there are all of these health codes (and rightfully so?) that force cafeterias to throw out leftover food--tons of it, day after day. Then I wonder, if that's true, because I had friends who worked in coffee shops who were always bringing leftover pastries home to share after the coffee shop closed at midnight. Maybe with larger universities there's an accountability system.

This dovetails nicely with the NYT report that some colleges are going very fancy with their cafeteria food. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/dining/09campus.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) Hmm, education, supposedly the great democratizer, still just serves the hierarchy at the end of the day. Some eat well, some eat ok, and some don't eat at all.

[Daniel C.]

I tried to get the cafeteria I worked at to give the untouched leftovers that never left the kitchen to the homeless. They refused to do it because they were afraid of getting sued.