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Environmental Studies Department |
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Behind the Scenes of Food Service at Macalester: What Does Eating on Campus Really Mean?
INTRODUCTION Food service at Macalester College is a very important consideration in determining the soundness of campus environmentally. Not only is food very important to all of us in the obvious terms of health and nourishment, but decisions in food purchases have great impacts on the environment. The growing national trend toward organic foods1 and specialty food stores reflects the country’s growing awareness of and concern for the food we ingest. We set out to understand what role Macalester plays in terms of commitment to environmental health with its food service decisions. We discuss several issues about Macalester’s food in the following text ranging from food waste disposal to purchasing and distributors. In each section we attempt to outline the current situation, problems with it, and finally, to provide suggestions for improvements. In addition, we have conducted a survey of students regarding their food preferences. These results are discussed here as well. IN WITH THE NEW KAGIN Now that food services is operating out of totally modern, and stylish, new facility, you might expect that some things would change. Apparently, food waste has been cut dramatically due to more efficient design of the cooking and prep areas, more storage space, to-order food preparation and “civilized” ambience. With more space for each chef to prep and cook their dishes, whole nights meals do not have to prepared in one shot, thereby leaving less excess for the garbage. Many of the food stations have to-order service, so meals are made individually and leftover raw veggies and such can be saved for the next day in the elaborate refrigeration and storage set-up. Simply by having more space to refrigerate food, cooks and staff don’t have to throw everything that wasn’t prepared out at the end of the night. However, the most notable change, to Gary Lensing at least, has been the response in the behavior of students. Gone are the days when ravenous students would pile plates full over nibbled over food high on their trays. He credited this change to the astronomical improvement in food quality as well as the seeming maturation of Macalester students. The old Kagin served notoriously bad food, to the extent that Gary said that all meals regardless of form were dubbed “Kagin.” The new Café Mac exudes a higher calling for college ruffians with its trendy colored dishes and fancy coffee cups, subliminally encouraging them to take only what they will eat, finish it and even stack then somewhat neatly to be washed. While this change in behavior is positive for food waste and general civility, it is not based on information or an effort to put sustainability at the top of lifestyle agendas. The waste of Kagin has gone down so much that we wouldn’t even call it problematic, but there is still a disconnect in student, and staff to a lesser extent, consciousness and self-responsibility regarding waste. There is still food being thrown away everyday at Kagin, and it would be worthwhile for some campus group to get involved and make that “waste” food for someone else, possibly in cooperation with homeless shelters or groups like Food Not Bombs. FOOD WASTE DISPOSAL—FROM PIGS TO PULPER For years, the food service operation out of Kagin Commons was disposing of all food waste by giving it to a local hog farmer to feed to his animals. What started out as a fairly small-scale operation, beneficial to both the college and the farmer became a costly, unsanitary hassle. Since Bon Appetite has been servicing Macalester, and maybe sooner, the college had actually been paying the hog farmer to take away the food waste. This practice became unsanitary because the farmer often missed pickup days because there was a delivery truck behind Kagin in the way. This resulted in food sitting around for extra time, attracting rodents and insects, and the problem of disposing of the further flow of food when the buckets were full and waiting to be emptied. Environmentally speaking, hog farming is not a particularly desirable activity. Feed lots are notoriously polluting, as the waste from the animals often adds toxic levels of nitrogen to groundwater, and the land is inefficiently used. They are also unsightly and smelly. With this in mind, the new switch away from a form of subsidy to the hog farmer by paying him to take away free food for his animals has been a positive step environmentally. This is especially true because of the new technology in place at the campus center to dispose of food and paper waste, called “The Pulper.” The Pulper is a kind of food processing system designed to turn large amounts of food and paper waste into a small compact volume of compressed pulp. It functions the following way. Food scraps and paper are first sent into the pulper via a water-filled aqueduct. In the pulper, said waste is churned around, mixed with the water, and turned into a waterlogged pulp-like substance. The water is then squeezed out and the dry pulp is put in a dumpster and sent to a landfill. The water that services the pulper is then recycled through the system. About 80% of the water is recycled through and 20% is fresh. The infusion of some fresh water is necessary in order to keep the working conditions for those in the dish room sanitary and pleasant. Otherwise the water begins to resemble a “thick chocolate milk,” says food service manager Gary Lensing. In our view, the change from pig buckets to pulper has been a positive step environmentally. However, more could be done in this regard. For example, a large percentage of food waste at Café Mac is vegetable or grain, both highly compostable. Bon Appetite or Macalester College could set up a contract with a composting company, much like that with the pig farmer, only more formalized, to have this food composted. This project would require separation of meat from non-meat food items, but we are confidant that Macalester students, staff, and faculty are sufficiently competent to manage this task. There are several composting agencies around the twin cities that might be willing to cooperate in such an undertaking. COFFEE—THE PEACE WAR After much debate and persistence on the part of several Macalester students, the college and Bon Appetite finally agreed to offer Peace Coffee on a trial basis at the new campus center grille. This was a significant victory because Peace Coffee is highly desirable from an environmental viewpoint. It is shade grown, meaning critical habitat for birds and other species is maintained while the coffee grows, and it is organically grown without chemicals that are harmful to health and the environment. In addition, Peace coffee is desirable from a human rights standpoint because it is “fair trade” meaning bought at a fair price directly from the farmers and not through “permissionarios” or middle men. So now coffee drinkers at the grille are presented with two options for coffee, Dunn Bros. and Peace. However, the reality of this choice is in question. The employees at the grille actually rarely make buyers aware of their choice. Often when someone asks for a cup of coffee, the grille employee doesn’t ask which kind, but merely presents him/her with Dunn Bros. When the employee does ask, they ask not which brand of coffee but rather, which roast or blend. For example, when Gary Lensing works in the morning he asks customers whether they want Guatemalan, Sumatran, etc., not indicating which is peace and which is Dunn. He considers this a fair way of evaluating the popularity of the two brands. As a result of this, without looking at numbers, Lensing estimates that the Dunn Bros. sells about four times better than the Peace. We disagree that this is a fair way of testing the coffee preferences. By it’s very nature, the Peace Coffee is desirable because of properties not evident in its flavor alone. A main selling point is that it is fair trade, shade grown, etc. So by denying it these features when presenting the option to customers, it doesn’t stand much of a chance. In response to this, we suggest that when the permanent menus for the grille are placed, that they clearly state which coffees are Peace and which are Dunn in addition to the table tents about the peace coffee which are in place now. It is also possible that the table tents alone are misleading in that uninformed customers might assume all the coffee is peace coffee, therefore their choice makes no difference. It is clear that some distinguishing steps need to be taken in this issue. BEHIND CLOSED DOORS Like many institutional decisions at Macalester, food purchasing goes on behind closed doors. Macalester, Bon Appetit and Alliant Food Distributors are joined in a business agreement that necessitates confidentiality in purchasing information. Theoretically, this secrecy allows Bon Appetit to receive deals from Alliant and pass those savings on to Macalester. While saving money is a good thing, doing so at the expense of transparency and accountability, especially regarding a topic with so many health consequences, would be criminal in a perfect world. If a student wanted to know where the food that they eat was coming from and how it was grown, leaving cost information out of it, they would be directed to Doug Rosenburg in Purchasing where they would either be stalled by an endless runaround and paper shuffle, or be flat out turned away. This is highly problematic. SUPPLIERS—THE ALLIANT ALLIANCE Bon Appetite as a national food service entity has a contract with Alliant food distributors. Alliant is a large distributor that supplies food service companies with a large variety of foods and food related supplies. From apples to Ziploc bags, Café Mac receives goods from this company. Macalester’s Bon Appetite does buy from additional suppliers for specialty foods, such as Asia food suppliers in St. Paul, but a “significant portion” of Macalester’s food is supplied by Alliant. This is the case because, with this contract, Bon Appetite is guaranteed a particular markup price on the food they buy, in addition to benefiting from various discounts and specials offered by the company. Since the business contract between Bon Appetite, Macalester and Alliant prohibit us from learning how much each type of food from Alliant costs the college, we can’t compare the prices of local suppliers of produce, for example, to those faced by Macalester already. In addition, we were not able to gain information on what brands of food Alliant uses, or where it comes from. We are sure, however, that through this contractual relationship, Macalester College is supporting large, unsustainable and socially irresponsible companies like ConAgra and Kraft, a subsidiary of Phillip Morris. Based on this knowledge we propose that Macalester insist upon Bon Appetit looking into local suppliers of apples, pears and squash for example. All three of these items are grown quite successfully here in Minnesota and other parts of the upper Midwest. Right now, apples and pears at Café Mac are shipped from Washington state. This seems to us absurd. Also, the availability of certain fruits that must be shipped from overseas like pineapples and bananas should be limited. This kind of transport is unsustainable and wasteful of energy and resources. There is a precedent for buying locally from farmers in the area. The colleges in Wisconsin are a primary example. The University of Wisconsin published a study2 on the food buying decisions of Wisconsin colleges, including the University of Wisconsin and smaller colleges like Northland College. Many have established relationships with local farmers to buy food from them. These colleges are not unlike Macalester in that they are serviced by outside food service contractors, however they recognize that they have a certain flexibility in buying decisions. Wisconsin has successfully linked colleges and local farmers to the benefit of both. Farmers experience greater revenue and colleges get locally grown food. This commitment by the college came about at the UW, Beloit College and Northland College because of pressure from the students and the administration to commit to sustainable food purchases. This article also noted that it is easier for smaller colleges to meet their produce demands this way than for larger colleges. Macalester, being a small college, should have no problems. Among the items supplied locally in Wisconsin are carrots, potatoes, onions, grains, apples, pumpkins and corn chips. In addition to this simple reform, we propose that Macalester reconsider it’s food service supplier when the contract is up for negotiation again. There are institutions like Macalester whose food service is devoted to sustainable, organic food. We should look into this for the future. It is important, however, to keep abreast of when the contract is up for renegotiation, and who sits on the committee to decide. Former director of Residential Life, Ann Bolger, informed us previously that a number of student sit on this committee. If the Environmental Studies department stays informed about when these proceedings are, we can send some students to that committee. THE SURVEY SAYS In order to gauge student knowledge of and preferences for organic and/or locally grown food, we circulated a survey (please see Appendix 1). The survey sought to measure food consumption preferences and behaviors, perceptions of organically grown food, and support for Macalester making a commitment to supplying organically and/or locally grown food. We asked specifically if students lived on or off campus to see if there was any correlation between preferences and living environment. The survey was randomly distributed to one hundred and fifty students SPOs. We received a twenty-percent response rate. While this does not constitute a statistically significant portrait of the Macalester community (about 2 percent of the entire student body), we would still like to present the results, as they were remarkable even for a small group of respondents. Therefore, for the purpose of this analysis we will assume that those people who did respond did so because they had strong feelings on the issue, and that this sample group should be looked at as representing the outliars of the Macalester community. Students seemed to fall into two groups: highly preferential toward and supportive of organic/local food, or they expressed very low preference and hesitant to no support. Some responded by saying that organically food was both healthier and better for the environment, and that they would shop at co-op grocery stores providing local, organic and bulk food. While others thought that organic food was neither, and that they would prefer to shop at Rainbow (or Outback Steakhouse), basing their consumption decisions on price and convenience. Of those who responded, seven live on campus and twenty-three off, and there was no significant variation in response percentages between the two groups. Well over half of the respondents said that they would support Macalester to provide organic/local food, but many from this group then said that they would not support this in the case of board price increases. When asked if they thought organically produced food was a) healthier, b) better for the environment, c) neither, or d) both, twenty percent responded with c) neither and fifty six percent with d) both. This was perhaps the most shocking question, with almost half of the respondents uniformed of the widely accepted (except at Monsanto and the FDA) environmental and health advantages of organic food. In light of the huge impact that the most recent farm crisis has taken on Minnesota farmers, you would think that people could not help but recognize the social and equity benefits to regional, non-industrial food production. Not surprisingly, students who felt that organic/local food was important also would be supportive of the college buying it. When asked if they would support Macalester in a decision to buy and serve organic and/or locally produced food, where “economically feasible,” seventy three percent said yes and twenty seven percent no. However, when asked if they would support this decision even if board prices went up “slightly,” thirty seven said “yes,” fifty three “no,” and ten percent “maybe.” This portion of the questionnaire elicited various people to write in their hesitation or emphatic objections with regards to price increases. The portion of the study that asked students to rate their preference for organic/local over conventional foods, almost half (forty seven percent) put themselves in the middle and twenty seven percent chose the lowest preference option. Only three percent marked that they felt the highest preference for organic/local food. So, while we are assuming that we are looking at outliars, the sample is highly weighted toward the “anti-organic” side. It is possible that these responses are products of misconceptions regarding the sanitary quality of organic food, or the backlash against political correctness that is snowballing on this campus. Macalester has a long history of bottom-up change, and from this meter of student attitudes it seems that support for organic and locally grown food on campus will need a strong shove. On-campus education regarding the entire spectrum of issues related involved in organic foods is the only way that student perceptions and, in turn, wants will change, calling on the administration to respond in their purchasing decisions. In the past outside groups, such as Consumer’s Right to Know and Mississippi Market, have held panel discussions in the chapel for students and the larger community. Teach-ins and panels could embrace such a range of issues that there would be something for all inclinations: health and environmental impacts, food irradiation, bioengineering, industrial agriculture, factory farming, migrant farm worker struggles, soil erosion, patenting of life and multinational corporate domination of alimentation, just to name of few of the possible topics. There doesn’t seem to be much demand for good, healthy food on campus, so we got to let folks know what is up before they can pressure the college to change behaviors. CONCLUSION This information paints a clear picture of the steps Macalester College must take in order to improve the food service in terms of the environment. With a few very simple steps, Macalester’s food service could become a leader and model for other colleges wishing to be environmentally sound. With the proper education and effort, we can strive toward this in the future. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1Organic Trade Association factsheet. 2000. www.ota.com 2University of Wisconsin’s Center for Integrated Agricultural Research. Research brief # 55 “Dishing up local food on Wisconsin Campuses.” http://www.wisc.edu/cias/pubs/briefs/055.html Contact: For more information about any of these campus food services or local food buying at other Wisconsin colleges, please contact CIAS at (608) 265-3704 or jhendric@facstaff.wisc.edu
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