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.

Bicycling out of a funk

       My husband and I recently completed a bike race for which we collected donations for cancer research.  Getting involved really just happened all of a sudden. For me it was just the thing I needed to focus on so I would not be so sad all the time from losing our beloved family members.  We started training seriously in May with a training schedule provided by the race organizers.  There was a training workout assignment every day for six weeks leading up to the race.  First, we began with an easy bike ride for a mile or two, just to warm up.  Then, we included a walk or a run on alternate days to build up endurance. The training schedule also had rest days, those were my favorite.  Eventually, we realized if we were going to be serious about riding twelve miles, all at once, we needed to step up the training pace.  My husband, kids and I would dedicate each week to one or two rides.  We would start out enthusiastic, but forget to fill the tires with air or not lock the wheels properly to the bike rack.  As we continued our training we found some kind of order and began to be less and less clumsy.  We found different metro parks to try new trails with hills or flat paths to develop stamina and distance endurance.  It turns out I enjoyed it!  I learned that when I ride a bicycle, memories of past rides with my friends come over me, as if I were a teenager.  I feel joy.

        Finally, we get to bike race day and of course it is the hottest day of the summer.  We manage to get to the starting line of the race, line up and then off we go.  On the road I met a woman who was actively going through clinical trials for cancer. We partnered up and talked the entire twelve miles sharing our life stories.  My husband wanted to ride ahead and so we met up again as he was coming out of Progressive Field, the Cleveland Indians baseball stadium.  It turns out, that as a special treat for the riders, we got to ride the track around the ball field.  "Slider", the Cleveland Indians team mascot was available to cheer us on and pose for pictures. 

     We still had the last mile to ride before the end of the race and I could not believe we finished it.  In that heat, riding that distance and raising the money for cancer research made last weekend a truly special day.  In our swag bags we were given blank stickers to wear and write why we were riding this race.  I read many heartfelt reasons that people shared. Cancer was just one reason people were riding.  Mostly the reasons were to honor friends and family that were taken too soon.  This experience was a good first step in remembering those we miss, but also an opportunity to wipe our eyes and take that next step back to the world of the living.

Ups and Downs of 2014

It is December 31 2014 and I am sitting at the kitchen table with my youngest daughter and my husband talking about our favorite things we did in 2014.  We travel a lot as a family so putting together a list of where we went during the year brought back some fun memories.  My daughter reminded me that we started 2014 with a Caribbean cruise to St Thomas and other Eastern ports of call with the entire family.  It was lots of fun. We took this great food tour of Nassau, Bahamas. I wrote about it on my Stone Soup Blog for Food and Nutrition Magazine. It was a three hour walking tour with stops at local restaurants and historic places of interest.  I highly recommend it when you travel there.  After we got back I hosted three bridal shower teas for friends and family whose children were getting married in the spring and summer of 2014.  These turned out to be quite fun, although, I have to admit by the time the third shower came around I was catering the food rather than cooking it.  My friends and daughters helped with the arrangements. I owe a huge thank you to everyone. I could not have done it alone.  Weddings bring out the joy in everyone.

 By the spring my youngest daughter graduated college and we were off to her graduation in Washington, DC.  I came to DC early so that I could attend the special events honor students get invited to at the end of the year for doing a job well done.  I went to an Order of the Engineer Ceremony where students are presented with a ring to remind the newly minted engineers of their ethical responsibility.  It was a lovely.  I also attended an honors open house located on the top floor of the 1957 E building the Elliot School of Public Affairs.  It offers a beautiful view of Washington DC and they served drinks, hors d'oeuvres and cake! The graduation present for my daughter and her friends was a trip to Brazil to see the opening ceremonies of the 2014 World Cup, soccer, for those not in the know.  This came about because my daughter's Brazilian friend invited their crowd to come and stay and by that I mean the friends said to him " how about we go to your house to stay while we visit the World Cup in Brazil".  Who could say no to that invitation?  Anyway, another marvelous thing we did at graduation was plan a luncheon so that all the parents in and out of Washington DC could meet one another.  It was a model UN with many different languages and good food. This lunch offered parents a chance to be included in their college students lives and to celebrate a job well done.  I would do it again in a minute.

In May and June we attended weddings, danced and reconnected with family and friends in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois.  Then the rains came and flights got delayed my husband and I headed off to Montreal, Canada to reconnect and celebrate our thirty third wedding anniversary where we honeymooned.  Some of my girls flew to DC to celebrate the 4th of July with friends  while others went back to work and school. Our visit to Canada included Montreal and Quebec City. We heard great jazz at the Montreal Jazz Festival and enjoyed the festivities at the 450th Anniversary of the discovery of Quebec City. In late July, the kids went to Colorado for hiking in Boulder and we joined them for the weekend.  That was lot's of fun.  I forgot how hard it is to hike in the mountains and how out of shape I am.

In mid July and August, the girls and I took a road trip to Pennsylvania to visit my brother and his wife.  We then moved on to New Jersey to visit with an aunt, who turned 89 years in November.  After that we went to New York City to visit my nephew who moved there last year, we were on our way to pick up my oldest, who was moving from Washington DC back to Cleveland.

 By August, my daughter mentioned she never saw Niagara Falls, so we planned a quick get away to see Niagara Falls and take a ride on the Maid of the Mist, the boat that goes under the falls.  I forgot how wonderful and fun that was and decided to not let so much time go by before we go there again.
Labor Day weekend brought one last road trip with the girls to Dartmouth College. My husband flew up to Boston and took the Dartmouth Bus from Boston to meet us.  We were supposed to have lunch with  cousins in Boston but that didn't happen. The rest of September I wrote about in the previous posting with the sudden passing of my father in law.  We had one more trip to NYC for work and then finally, we went on a family cruise in early December.

Unfortunately, we end this year with a very sad event, my brother passed away suddenly from a heart attack after coming home from the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  Although we had a wonderful Thanksgiving as an extended family with brothers and cousins, we had a very sad and traumatic end.  It is still too painful to think about it now, but aside from this very great loss of my beloved brother, and my father in law the year 2014 was an up and down year.

Seasons of Change

We have had some sad news recently.  My father-in-law Leonard Rood has passed away.  He was a remarkable man and a hard worker.  He loved his beautiful wife Ruth, his sons and their families, his sister Eleanor and her family and cousins. Len had a keen mind for invention.  He could see and imagine things others could not and was gifted with the extra special talent to create them.  His  genius can be seen among his family in the qualities of his children and grandchildren.  You might imagine that Len was able to take this gift and live like a king. Some days were better than others as we all experience.  Overall, I believed he was happy, especially during the middle years when he found the love of his life in Ruth and they both had all the world ahead of them.

 Last January, my husband Mark, the kids and I went to Florida to spend time with Len before we went on a vacation.  We took Grandpa Len out for lunch with cousins and my daughters played piano and sang for anyone listening at the retirement home where he was living at that time.  It was such a lovely moment for everyone and the one I will remember most when thinking of his his last months.

Every ending has a beginning....

In the early married days, both Len and Ruth worked hard.  Ruth as a teacher and Len as chemical engineer. To raise their family, often moving up to ten times for work or to get better care for a sick child life challenges came at them and were handled to the best of their ability. Both Ruth and Len came from hard working middle class families. Education was important and we heard Len was working on a PhD in Engineering when the Korean War interrupted his life and the lives of his generation.  Len once told us that he wanted to be a doctor and go to medical school but admission limitations toward Jews prevented that dream. His children and grandchildren are making up for that and he was proud of them. His duties during the Korean War was to use his knowledge as a Chemical Engineer to help keep the troops healthy solving problems with sanitation issues.  He loved photography and created a slide set of photos detailing his arrival home after the war.  His correspondence letters to his beloved Ruth also detail the days he spent in the war.  Shortly after his arrival home Ruth and Len were married on June 28, 1953 in New Jersey.


 It will be almost twenty years when my father in law announced to us he and Ruth were moving away from their home in Columbus, Ohio to Boynton Beach, Florida to retire. After working as a chemical engineer and inventor with some successes.  My father in law decided to join my mother in law as a Realtor, a field she had switched into after her thirty years as a teacher.  Together they opened up a real estate agency called "Rood Realty".  This gave the two of them an opportunity to work together and by doing that my father in law was able to raise enough cash to finally retire. This was his dream and not necessarily hers, but so excited was he that this time in their lives had finally come, Ruth agreed to join him.  It worked out well for them for the first ten years they were healthy, my mother in law was in remission from her cancer, Non-Hodgins Lymphoma, and they had money from retirement and the sale of the home in Columbus.  The neighborhood was brand new and, Len's personality was more outgoing and  they enjoyed meeting new friends, reconnecting with family and socializing as they had not done in a long time.

My mother in law, Ruth, had lived with cancer for 27 years and passed away in 2011.  I know she was frustrated as she saw Len and the oncoming dementia.  She tried to communicate this to her sons, but they were not listening.  Not because they did not care, but because eventually dementia makes itself known and everyone has to pay attention.  In the early days of the disease, dementia quietly sneaks up on families so that by the time one figures out what is wrong, it is too late to prevent, but only keep comfortable.  I believe my mother in law saw the early changes, and did not have the physical strength to do anything about it.  I always felt my father in law was lucky with his version of the illness, in that, he could walk and talk, be social and pleasant. In fact, I sometimes felt, he was easier to be around and less confrontational than when he was healthy, but frustrated with work or an experiment he was currently working on. Just before my mother in law passed away we moved them both into an assisted living facility in Florida.  We knew Ruth hated it there and within six months, coincident or not, she passed away.  Len met other widowed women to socialize with and share company for dinner.. He seemed to get along okay in his widower-hood and so as family we took comfort in the fact that he was okay and thus our visits were less frequent than when my mother in law was alive.


The last week of life.....

The girls and I arrived in Florida first and went straight to the hospital to see Len whom we were told was in intensive care.  The hospital he was taken to the week before was JFK Medical Center in Atlantis, Florida.  This is the closest medical center, to Cresthaven East, the assisted living home where he lived. Mark, joined us that evening and the rest of the family arrived the next day as the weather delayed flights from the north down to Florida.  When we saw Len at the hospital he looked like he was sleeping.  We sat nearby and told stories of better days.  At this point all medical availability was being utilized.  He had lines for food and medicine and oxygen to keep him pink and alive,

  We we told, quite too late, that Len had not received enough oxygen after his heart failed in the ambulance and so all these heroics were useless as eventually decisions had to be made to disengage my father in law from life giving help.  The choice of when to leave the living, of course, was up to him. The exact minute between life and death seems important to some and I wonder if the person leaving this world gets a vote as to who gets to witness.  I am guessing  that if a person has had a loving relationship with someone in the real world then there might be few regrets if you are not present for the exact moment of leaving.  If on the other hand, there were things or thoughts left unsaid, emotional leftovers might get in the way of  moving on with life. In our case I feel we shared time with Len enough over the years, so that aside from bringing him back to Ohio, we did all we could do in a reasonable way.

  A few things happened right before we said goodbye for the last time that I think were odd and could be argued in favor of signals from the other side that it is you time.  I will lay out the case and you decide for yourselves.  First, in the winter when we visited Len he kept asking to north with us because he believed he was being kicked out of the assisted living facility.  We believed him at first and checked with the staff and they reassured us that nothing was going to happen, but when we came back to collect his things we learned that the facility had major staff turnover and that perhaps there might have been talk of closing down for a brief moment.  We will never know for sure.

Usually the assistant living facility neglects to inform the family when my father in law is admitted to the hospital and we find out from the hospital.  This time the assisted living facility lets us know but the hospital does not.  Since we are never informed as to the condition of Len at every turn, and only find out when we call, even though the hospital has Mark's number we are shocked to find out how serious the heart event actually was and that with two sons as physicians there is nothing we can do about it.  This makes a profound impression on Mark, a family physician, who spends his days saving people's lives.

Epilogue
The family is upset and disappointed at how JFK Medical Center handled the admission and follow up of my father in law Leonard Rood.  They, as an institution, should be ashamed of themselves.  We tried to recover Len's belongings and were told they could not be found.
The hospital administrator has confirmed that all of my father in laws property when initially admitted into the hospital from the Emergency Department; his clothing, wallet and wedding ring are lost and cannot be recovered.  They have informed us that they are closing his case.

Blood is Life

     As a registered dietitian for thirty years I have had plenty of conversations about what is the proper food to eat to stay alive in a healthy way.  I have studied and read scientific papers and heard from notable experts about their opinion on what is exactly the specific things we should and should not be eating. It occurs to me, however, that there is no answer that satisfies everyone.  Most likely, there probably never was a good answer. After a personal illness that landed me in the intensive care unit twenty two years ago, I began to look for answers from a spiritual nature.  I studied the Bible via the Jewish religion, the Torah, and learned about the Ancient Tribes and what motivated them to pursue their cultural traditions. I am no rabbinical scholar but I see the word of God discussed in Genesis and other chapters in a different light based on my experiences with food, nutrition and the behavior of people.
      God distinguishes Adam and Eve from the other animals and plants as mentioned in the early passages of Genesis. I got a chance to explore this in more detail, recently, when a visiting scholar came to our local college and offered a discussion on the origins of Kosher and Halal,, the set of laws determined by God to educate the tribal populations on how to decide what to eat, with respect to the other things being made during Creation.  It was pointed out that Adam and Eve were vegetarians in the Garden of Eden. It was only until after the flood was man able to eat other animals and then never the blood.  In fact the first food restriction ever is blood.  My fellow classmates were professionals of all types including Rabbis and Imams who offered their own interpretations based on their own experiences.  I also enjoyed seeing a few friends from the Muslim community with whom I had shared other classes and they offered wonderful interpretations of  Halal and how many similarities there are between Halal and Kashrut (Kosher).
     This was a really wonderful discussion and an observation I thought of afterward about blood is that medically blood is life.  Its purpose in the body is to circulate oxygen, nutrients and proteins and bring back toxins, urine and refuse which keeps the body healthy. If we could just celebrate the good in life it would be easy, but historically and spiritually, there is evil to balance the good.  In the case of blood throughout history, particularly evident in the 11th Century during the First Crusade, there were Blood Libels or accusations of a horrible nature that caused much death and destruction to Jews of that time.  Throughout history these unproven accusations were added to such that by the 1930's and 1940's a Holocaust, also known as Shoah, claimed the lives of 6 million Jews and other citizens across the European continent.  Even today as we remember the twentieth anniversary of Rwanda, the evil side of blood still raises its ugly, uneducated head in places like Eastern Ukraine and parts of Africa.
     I heard three pieces of bad news yesterday from unrelated sources.  Some affecting friends and others listening to the news.  I felt helpless to ease the pain except to try to do good in my own small way locally in my community to balance with good thoughts or action against the negative news.  I personally believe in the concept of Mitzvot, doing good deeds, to help sway the world to a better place.

Passover 2014: My reliable go to diet for the summer!

Passover 2014: My reliable go to diet for the summer!