Back to School- Food Service industry Dirty Little Secret

I graduated in 1980 from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor degree in Human Nutrition.  In 1983 I received a Master's degree in Nutrition Education, and in 2010 I received another Master's degree in Judaic Studies, so its safe to say I love going to school. Today, I am sitting in the main library at Ohio University while my oldest child, a Master's in Health Policy degree professional herself, interviews for medical school.  As I am waiting for my daughter and it's lunchtime, I head over to the cafe in the library.  I am struck by how different food choices are today for college students, and what is available to them, than it was in my day.  I am sure we had vending machines, but I don't remember food being so available.  I know that I signed up for the meal plan, but if I wanted food I had to walk to my assigned cafeteria and not have a card that allowed me to eat wherever.  I also know that the food was homemade right in the kitchens on campus that day and not by a food service corporation and trucked onto campus.  Today, I went to a local chain drugstore looking for a diet soda and discovered that the 20 oz variety costs $1.89, but if I wanted a 1 Liter it was $1.10 and if I purchased a 2 Liter it was $.99.  What a scam!

  In the cafe by the library they do not sell soft drinks.  Only coffee and teas for hot beverages and for cold beverages only bottled teas and lemonade.  If you want a Red Bull or Monster drink loaded with sugar and caffeine, well, there are plenty of those. What happened  to choice in an institutional setting?  It seems that universities and Big Food have made a partnership. While new students are distracted by learning and developing a social life, colleges have been signing food contracts with food corporations or third party food service organizations.  Its a win for them all. The universities receive lots of income and Big Food or third party groups use Millennials to introduce new brand items for future customers.  The irony is that all the pressure parents and school districts put on food manufacturers to provide healthy food during the elementary, middle school and high school years is all forgotten once students leave the nest to attend college. There is fresh money and no parental interference in food choices. There is also no mandatory nutrition course to explain to students drinking Red Bull a few times a day may not be healthy for you at 27 grams of sugar for one 8.4 oz can.  Nor is there anyone to explain that you might feel better eating a healthy diet, getting some exercise everyday and making sure you get a good nights sleep.

 This is not to say that there is no healthy food served at the cafe at the library.  I just finished a "Which Came First Salad" which I finally figured out means that it is a salad with a sliced hard boiled egg and cut up chicken nuggets and cheese. Get it? I didn't when I ordered it but I do now.  It was fine, though I had to pull out many lettuce pieces because they were spoiled.  It was expensive for just a salad, but if I were a student, I would be using my meal credit card and not paying attention to cost.  A few years ago another daughter of mine realized that at her university she would never eat in food the amount of money she was paying for her meal card, and so she would go to the cafeteria/food store and buy up all the non-perishable items and bring them home at the end of every semester.  She realized before I did what over payment she was making every semester during her undergraduate years and by buying out the food it was her way of fighting back.  It was very clever.

 The problem of course is there is no refund or "carrying over" accounting for meal plans at colleges and universities.  That would defeat the purpose of schools overcharging students for food in the first place. In an article entitled "A Lesson in College Foodservice", fast casual service is what the Millennials are looking for on college campuses, leaving traditional fast food brands from the past, out of favor.  Slowly, the farm to table movement will be incorporated into institutional food life at college campuses, as long as Big Food and national third party vendors like Aramark and Sodexo can figure out how to monetize it. But in the mean time, everyone involved in this industry realizes the long-term profitability of engaging this demographic into a favorite brand. Once they are hooked on a brand it becomes part of their memory and looked upon fondly.  That is until one day they go to the doctor and realize their blood sugar is too high.  Oh well, that is another post.

Mind over matter

At the start of 2016 I determined that a page needed to be turned and some of my lifestyle habits needed to be reevaluated to a new level of heath and well being.  However, the idea of eliminating chocolate chip cookies out of my life is most likely an unachievable goal.  I tell you I have tried.  I have made or purchased low sugar, low fat, gluten free, whole grain, and no egg varieties.  It seems to be a waste of time, energy and money. Instead, I decided to try to change other behaviors in my life and work around the cookies.  In doing this, I started meditation.  It turns out there are several apps on meditation I can download to my smartphone that have free trials before purchase.  My daughter helped me out in this experiment. She and I exercise an adequate number of hours amount per week so non-compliance for aerobic activity really was not the problem. What I felt instead was that there was so much daily stress in my life and what seemed to be missing was the deep sense of calm or quiet that I remember having.  

 One day my daughter showed me one of these meditation apps and we decided to follow the plan.  It  took only ten minutes of time and used quick animation videos, on occasion, to help illustrate the point of that day's session.  At first it seemed funny and uncomfortable.  It was hard to believe that taking just ten minutes a day of guided reflection could make any difference in the stress level of one's life.  But after doing it for close to the ten days I really do believe it has made a tiny difference.  If only just to give me a pause before I make a knee jerk decision about something.  For example, I was in a hurry to get to a class for which I was late and did not remember to pack a lunch.  I was going to run through a fast food drive line to buy food that was quick but unhealthy.  In the short time it took me to drive to where the fast food restaurant was located I had taken an extra minute to reevaluate whether I really needed the fast food or just go home where I can make a healthy lunch. I chose to go home and probably saved some money and calories.  I attribute that decision to the meditation because before I started meditating I am pretty sure I would have gone out for lunch.

Taking the time, even just for a moment, to include another thought rather than just moving along on auto-pilot is the purpose of meditation.  This time it was a rather non-serious crisis but big poor choices are just a lot of small decisions added up.  I have had an enormous amount of stress in my life over the past few years and probably made many poor food choices.  I could run marathons and not fix the overall problem of too much stress.  But taking ten minutes to decompress and learn how to ignore distractions or be less critical of myself and others might just allow the better decisions to come to light.