By Kyle Carr
Many things food-related have happened to me, both in and out of this class, since my last blog post, which was about discrepancies in food quality between different food providers on campus. I have, since then, actually had food from every different on campus source, including housing and dining, the LSC food courts, and LSC catering. Additonally, I have done some research and scouting into the problems of food injustice in Larimer County, just around the corner. Finally, I did my project on food as art, which made me realize just how much I’ve been missing out on good food while eating primarily at the dining halls. This mix of experiences has led me to the conclusion that there is major food injustice going on with the dining halls here at CSU, which unfairly targets the freshman living on campus.
First, I think I would like to discuss where this idea started. A few weeks ago, I attended an epidemiology lunch and learn session because I am quite interested in the field. I was not expecting anything spectacular for the lunch part of the session, but I was pleasantly surprised. There was a simple spread of a couple small appetizers, a salad, condiments, and two different kinds of sandwiches. When I looked closer at the sandwiches, I almost gasped; one variety was a well made chipotle chicken with bacon and the other was a goat cheese feta with pesto and sun-dried tomato. This was clearly from CSU Catering. I opted for the goat cheese feta and it was simply amazing, and the foccaccia bread it was served on was truly fresh. It was really edible art, with its wonderful mix of fresh flavors. Upon mentioning it to some of my friends, I realized that just the ingredients used here, let alone the execution, are never anywhere near a a dining hall. I mean goat cheese? Oh, please. And more often than not when I get foccaccia from a dining hall, it is either stale or mushy. Something was surely off here.
As I often like to do when I first research a subject, I delved right in to the math of the situation. I first put the lens over my own situation. According to the rates and application section of the CSU Dining and Housing website, I currently pay about $5400 per semester for housing and food. They, of course, make it intentionally unclear about how much is going to either housing or food. But I think we can tease it out by using some figures of what I will be paying for housing alone next year. For a single bedroom with a shared bath in a three bedroom house, I will pay $450 per month for rent and about $30 per month for utilities, for a total of about $480 per month. This is, by the way, much more roomy and luxurious than my room in the residence hall while being in the same general location. If you multiply that by four, the number of months we are allowed to stay in our residence halls each semester, you get $1920. If you subtract that from the total paid, you are left with $3480 going straight to food, or what works out to $870 per month, a really outrageous number for one person who dines in a group setting. Furthermore, this works out to $10.36 per meal. When you consider that anywhere from 5 to 10 of my meal swipes every week are used at an express, which requires only unskilled labor and bulk, generally processed foods that usually cost well under $5 per meal swipe, even more questions about the dining hall food quality and efficiency arise. Now you may be wondering about your own situation and per meal cost, and I invite you to do the math for yourself to see just how much your food costs you this year.
Next, I went to the LSC catering website to do some research on their offerings and per meal costs. I was honestly surprised with how reasonable their pricing was; no more than your average diner or restaurant, although burgeoning with options. Amazingly, all of their breakfast plate entree options for fifteen or more people cost less than the $10.36 I am effectively charged for each meal at the dining center. A couple of my favorite options can be accessed here and are as follows:
“CSU Ram Scram
Scrambled eggs, cheesy hash brown casserole, and thick-sliced bacon served with warm fruit muesli, freshly baked biscuits, butter, and preserves
$9.75″
“Almond Crusted French Toast
Thick slices of French bread coated with a crunchy sweet almond butter, served with maple sausage, maple syrup, homemade whipped cream, and fresh berries
$9.75″
When was the last time you saw anything that complete and complex in the dining halls? I do not think I ever have. If you are willing, take a further look at the Catering menu, I think you will be impressed by their selection and pricing.
Now you may be wondering, why does this matter? It matters because while there is no huge difference in the cost to consumer of the food on campus, whether it is from catering or a dining hall, there is a huge difference in quality. Freshman are effectively getting the shaft. We know from Dr. Eric Milholland that the quality and locality of ingredients is much lower in the dining halls. Essentially all of it is sourced from US Foods, and because of that it is actually purchased below wholesale. Furthermore, it is prepared in generally much larger quantities, which should cut down on the cost of preparation. Finally, unlike catering, it is served where it is cooked, which makes it much easier and cheaper to keep in an ideal serving condition, although it still often isn’t. All of this together should be an equation for a cheaper end product, but it just does not end up that way.
The question is, why? I believe the biggest reason may be their incredibly inefficient style of buffet serving. How often do you go to buffets where you do not just serve yourself? That is kind of the point of a buffet. Portions are not supposed to be limited and there shouldn’t be servers, unless you’re at some incredibly formal event. And then there is the food waste. Naturally, buffets will produce more food waste than restaurant style dining where you order off a menu. But that waste will be exponentially larger when entire platters are destroyed by poorly trained or apathetic chefs, if one can even call them that. This is probably the main reason that the dining halls do not use the caliber of ingredients that catering uses at the same price point. I think this is another huge difference between catering and the dining halls that results from a lack of competition. For example, literally every time that french toast is served in the AV dining hall, it is very crunchy and dried out. Also, it is now quite apparent to me that nobody in the dining halls has ever been trained on how to prepare honeydew melon; you do not eat the green part, people! If these servers had any passion for what they were doing, or if their jobs were actually somewhat dependent on the quality of work they put out, then maybe we would see an upward trend in food quality. The ingredients in dining halls surely are cheaper, but I admit that doesn’t necessarily mean they are inherently bad, especially the fruits. However, nothing is going to be any good when it is cooked wrong or just generally prepared unskillfully. The combination of lower quality ingredients and severely worse preparation, for the same price as other sources even on campus, really makes one scratch their head at what is going on behind the scenes at the dining halls.
CSU Housing and Dining services is guilty of chronic and severe inefficiency, and would in no way survive as a business if it was not imposed upon all of the freshman of the University. It is, quite simply, not competitive in terms of the cost to quality ratio. By combining the costs of room and board, they create an illusion of thrift, but when you break out the calculator, it is quite clear that something is up.
Milholland, E. (Writer). (2016, February 22). Sustainability in Foodservice. Live performance
in Aspen Grill, Lory Student Center, Fort Collins.
meaningfulfoodblog 
Wow! I had heard that each dining hall swipe was around $10 before but having you lay out the calculation really made me realize just how absurd it is that we pay that much for our food, especially when it is such low quality as you mentioned. You made an interesting point about how some of the waste and inefficiency in the dining halls could be decreased by having self-serve food. I hadn’t thought of this but I think you could be right. I know for me at least, the portions they give me are probably smaller than what I would normally have. Now, this could be a good thing in some ways because it keeps students from grabbing more than they can eat and then throwing it out, but then again if not all the pieces of food are taken they will just throw them out anyways. Which is worse? On your point about the low quality ingredients- I think this needs to be changed too. I mean if we are seriously paying over $10 per meal swipe (some of which never get used, at least in my case) you would think they could put some extra effort into making the food better quality. However, I think the issue here is that most of the employees in the dining halls are students who are doing a work study. This means that many of them probably don’t know all that much about cooking, and even if they did they aren’t getting quality ingredients- we have all seen that shake and bake chicken. As for the LSC catering options you mentioned, those do sound like more complex choices, but I actually wouldn’t prefer to have those options on the menus. I would prefer there be more healthy options such as steel cut oatmeal and scrambled eggs that didn’t come out of a carton. Overall, there just needs to be a balance between healthy and less healthy foods, but they all need to be prepared well and come from quality ingredients. This may seem like a big demand, but as you mentioned, we are paying an incredible amount for this food.
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