Nov
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Students Get Guilt Trip Over Wasted Cafeteria Food
Associated Press
AVE MARIA, Fla. — Ave Maria University is serious about reducing food waste in its cafeteria.
Last week, a staffer stood by the cafeteria trash can, polling students about the grub they were about to dump: You didn’t like it? Or you took too much?
The trashed leftovers were weighed every day, and bags representing the amount of food wasted were propped up next to the trash cans. By Friday, the university’s food service director Joel Dekkers estimated the week’s waste added up to 800 pounds of food.
Officials and student leaders are hoping the experiment raised awareness about food waste, and will make students pause before loading up their trays.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
What’s next? Is Ave Maria U going to measure stool samples to see just how well the body is digesting food. This would further cut down waste as they can force the students to scale back on the amount of fecal matter they create. Team up with Cheryl Crow and you can use one sheet of T.P. to clean-up.
Get serious Greenies
November 24th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Green used to be my favorite color (I’m Irish…Excuse me… Irish-American) Until the Environuts got a hold of it.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
This will not work. Until the unlimited bufet at most college campuses ends, the students will not care because, to be blunt, they student meal plan covers it. However, if they were allotted only so much per week, with the ability to rollover to the following week, for meals at the cafeteria, then they would care. Being a college kid is just like Wall Street, you do not care unless it affects your purse strings.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Finally, something is being done about wasted food! God has blessed us abundently and we can thank Him by not wasting His gifts to us. It is a bad habit or is it a sin? And remember “Waste not, Want not” This is an excellent “experiment” in an excellent university. Thanks!
November 26th, 2008 at 11:27 am
We are very fortunate to have all that we have in this country. Including the copious amounts of food that we produce. That others in Africa DON’T have food is NOT our fault, or OUR problem. Think of this a cold if you want, but you also KNOW that it’s true. Aren’t we helping the poor peoples of the Earth? Aren’t we, the United States of America, already doing MORE THAN all the rest of the world combined, to help keep those people from starving? The answer, in case your trying to rationalize yourself a “NO” is
YES. Don’t try and lay a guilt trip on any good citizen because of your own moral misgivings. Another cold hard fact, is that the people in Africa keep having more and more and more children, and they have more and more and more children, and the endless stream of poverty perpetuates itself. Again, not our f-ing fault, or our f-ing problem. When the h-ll will it ever end, and when are we ever going to stop seeing those skinny sick little kids on tv and people whining about helping them. Oh and by the way, I give more money, and a higher percentage of my income to charity than slow Joe Biden.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Just a few years ago I as a parent learned that the technequic my mother used at the dinner table led to obscenity.–”John there are starving kids in China that have no food. You can not leave the table until you eat everything off your plate.”–
Now you want to start it again. How about we lose the liberal teachings at our schools and teach personal responsibility. Then maybe our kids will be more responsible overall. It worked with our parents…
November 29th, 2008 at 6:49 am
Thankyou John B for an extremly rational response.
I dont believe keeping my brain engaged makes me any the less a careing person. It just makes it possible for me to focus my careing on where it will do the most long term good
November 29th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Wow. Comments by that other John B are pretty disturbing. Neither the article nor the other bloggers even brought up the topic of Africa. Yet this guy’s expletive-filled rant shows so little empathy, and misses the point of the article. Nothing he says justifies the waste of food. Charity giving and Joe Biden have nothing to do with the article. Republicans like this guy embarrass Republicans like me. What does liberalism or conservatism have to do with this?The student meal plan comments by James Grimes are well taken – all-you-can-eat buffets (contractually due to the food service vendors themselves) contribute to food waste. By the name of this university, I assume it’s probably a private school and most likely Catholic – a lesson in personal responsibility sounds like a great idea for our spoiled younger generation.
John B., M.D.
November 29th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
John, did you perhaps mean obesity, rather than obscenity? Then again…………..
November 30th, 2008 at 9:08 am
John B and John Doe both make excellent points. It is indeed about personal responsibility. College kids waste because they’ve been brought up by parents who allowed them to do so at home. Liberal thinking allows waste and yet it allows guilt over Third Worlders who can’t control themselves. Conservative thinking and Conservative values did indeed make this country strong, and only Conservative values will keep us that way in the face of a Liberal world view and a Liberal United Nations. We, as a nation, have done all we can to help the rest of the world, and now they despise us for still having more than they do because they have no self-control.
November 30th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Why not instead change how food is served? I’m at a Buffet style university, and if they did something like only give one main meal (out of a choice of three) and two or three sides (out of a choice of five or six) instead of sections of sides and main meals, then more food would be saved.
With this, you can’t start from the bottom and expect the change to happen. You have to start from the top. The students won’t mind much, just let the football players/ sports people go back for 2nds (They need it!)
December 1st, 2008 at 6:17 am
The correct response to the staffer is, “Go wipe some tables, would ya?!?”
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:06 am
Honestly, you are full of yourself if you seriously think that how little or much food you waste means one jot to starving people in third world countries. If you feel compassion for them, do something about it. Simply wallowing in guilt is shallow and meaningless.
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:47 am
I think there is something to say for both sides of the argument. Yes, the students are paying for the food they throw away, they are allowed to throw away whatever is theirs, right. But at the same time, teaching conservation is a good thing. I say, let the crazies keep crazying (it’s what balanced the over zealous), but make sure we don’t go too far. Tell kids about the waste, tell them to conserve, but don’t enforce too strict rules.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:47 am
What about the food left over after each mealtime is complete?? Does the school invite the homeless and destitute into the cafeteria to eat the rest of it so it doesn’t go to waste?? Or is the food thrown away, like it is at any other institution (sometimes required by law)??
December 4th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I am a single mom & when my daughter was little I had very little money for food. We never had to miss a meal (thank God), but came very close and how precious every morsel becomes is something I think you have to experience to understand.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:56 am
I think what they did was good and completely un-political. Sometimes you just need to see your actions from a different perspective.
Also- our food consumption in the U.S. directly affects other country’s ability to acquire food.
We pay higher prices for more food and poorer people can’t afford to buy. So if we bought less and ate what we needed, the price of food would go down & it would be more affordable for others.
BTW- I am a conservative.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Avaviel’s got it right here.
Wasting food isn’t the problem exactly. It’s a symptom of the real challenge, which is that people don’t value food.
We’ve gotten so far away from what it actually takes to produce the things we’re putting into our bodies, and that distancing has led to our belief that taking too much and then dumping it later is okay. It’s part of the same reason we’re an obese country. We overeat because we don’t realize the value of food (and I’m not talking about the “value” menu at McDonald’s either).
We start to make changes by changing people’s thoughts. We don’t change people’s thoughts by challenging their behaviors, but rather by finding out what’s important to them, and then helping them understand how their behaviors run contrary to their beliefs.
Interesting experiment, but I don’t think it was a good use of time or money to pay this person to stand by the trash can.
Jonathan
http://www.GreenJoyment.com
December 5th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Has anyone actually tried college food? Seriously, the college I went to (like a year ago) had terrible food!! Like we didn’t want to waste the food but at times it would be under cooked or tasted so terrible that you would get sick off it. In fact there were those lovly nights that the restrooms in the dorms would be filled because of the food. I do believe in not wasting food, but on the same hand, I don’t want to get sick off it. Therefore, at my college you needed to pick and choose what to eat. Most times, you can decided what is decent but there are those time that it was bad.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:51 am
UVM , Champlain College, and others slashed their food waste getting rid of the trays, just a plate. Saved a lot of water and energy not washing trays.
After getting rid of the trays there was much less uneaten food in the compost barrels.
December 5th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Unlimited buffet? I’ve been to 3 colleges, and have never seen such a thing.
December 6th, 2008 at 7:18 am
hahaha John Doe – I teach at a university in china and don’t tell your Mom but the students here do the same thing. Only difference is that a guy with a bicycle cart comes by after meals and carries off the drums of yuck. They feel it to pigs.
December 6th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Why does it matter about food that is wasted? First of all if we pay for it, it is then ours to do what we will with it. Secondly, bringing awareness about “food waste” seems like another way to guilt people into feeling horrible about being American. Just like the people in America who are becoming increasingly ashamed to buy whatever they wish just becuase they can. This guilt is brought on by the media and is only hurting the economy. This is American, if u can afford buy it and then do as you wish with it, like THROW IT AWAY.
December 8th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Nix the buffet and hire lunch ladies to ration the food. That will solve the problem.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
How telling the food minders that it is none of their *&^**@ business, ’cause it isn’t. I am so done with liberal guilt trips and feel good blather. It’s pap for the masses.