Filler

Deja Food: The Carson Connection

By Takeshi Koike

2200 pounds. Does that number mean anything to you? It represents the average weight of the food served in the Carson cafeteria in a single day. Do you know where Carson cafeteria leftovers go to? Do you know how menus are decided there? There are many unknowns about the Carson cafeteria, though the place is an everyday experience for most dorm residents, and the better you know the system, the better your time in the residence halls will be.

A total of 2100 students eat at Carson per day: approximately 300 students for breakfast, about 700 for lunch and about 1000 for dinner. Traffic peaks on Monday and Thursday nights. From 1800 to 2500 - 2200, averaged - pounds of food (depending on the menu) is served per day to satisfy the residents' hunger, or about 0.9 pounds to 1.25 pounds per head.

Additionally, many students are dissatisfied with the limited menu and limited quality, and instead go to Grab N' Go every weekend to close out the points they couldn't use up in the university's dining halls. Kouji Sonezaki, from Japan, said, " I don't like the foods served in Carson. They don't suit my taste at all. Therefore, I must eat Cornflakes and breads usually, because these foods are much better for me than other foods. I lost about 10 pound in a month."

Cindy Lund, food service manager of the Carson cafeteria meets with the four managers of the university's dining halls (UI, Hamilton and so on) every Monday to plan the menus, based on a worksheet of available leftovers. Factoring into their decision are popular foods, unpopular foods and ways to reduce food trash as much as possible. In the meeting, they also refer to the "Got a suggestion" sheets, on which students can write comments and make requests to the university's dining halls, as well as the "What's cooking" sheets on which students are invited to request their favorite family recipes. Students going to the Carson cafeteria submit about 300 "Got a suggestion" sheets in a week. Lund writes a response to many of them and posts them near the exit of the Carson cafeteria. In fact, a lot of suggestions have already helped to improve the menus and surroundings in these dining rooms. In addition, they have begun holding a "food forum" every third Thursday, starting this October. About 20 students attended the food forum and exchanged views aggressively. At least formally, there are several avenues for students to register dissatisfaction with the dining halls.

For years, recycling has been a very popular topic in developed countries. How are the recycling systems of university dining rooms organized? Moreover, where do our leftovers go? The foods students don't consume are kept under strictly sanitary care to be reused at the next meal or during the next day. The staffs of the university's dining halls check the quality and temperature of foods very carefully, and it is stored for a limit of two days to prevent food poisoning. After that the foods are served again, often taking on a different shape. For example, uneaten potatoes are cut smaller and served again as the ingredients of vegetable soup. French toast not consumed during breakfast sometimes resurfaces as lunch's grilled cheese sandwiches. About 20 pounds of what is not reused is sent to local homeless shelters.

Still, too much the leftovers go down the drain. " Customers' waste are too much," Lund says. "If students lessen their first taking and come back to take food again according to their appetite, food waste will decrease very much." She has made an effort to improve menus and adjust food amount based on the food worksheets and students' opinions to reduce student's leftovers. Needless to say, reducing food waste depends on students' effort, too.

The better you know the Carson cafeteria, the better chance you have to improve your diet. As mentioned, you can express your discontent through suggestion cards, making it possible to change the dining halls' offerings to something hopefully more satisfying - if you take advantage of them. Lund says," Our top priority is customers' satisfaction."

Takeshi Koike, a freshman majoring in journalism, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator