When it comes to food, the University of Denver does not normally stand out. In mass-producing menu items from Sodexo many students feel the food to be bland, as well as over or under cooked or seasoned. Many students also feel that the food produced at the cafeteria is worse for them than most alternatives in spite of the self-proclaimed dedication to healthy cooking that Sodexo makes. This is a huge problem when it comes to student-cafeteria relationships. While the cafeteria does give students “healthier” options, many students find these options unappealing and are willing to settle for the pizza or hamburgers present at most meals, or in some cases go off campus for fast food. While these foods are more appealing to students, they are nowhere close to being better than the alternatives for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Students feel that the cafeteria underperforms because the people who work there cannot cook. Sodexo refutes this and occasionally opens up the cafeteria to the general public in order to showcase the talents of their chefs. In spite of the skills of the chefs, they still do not appear to be successful in producing food that is both appealing and healthy for the student body.
I’m not normally a picky eater, as a student athlete I normally consume a ton of food daily. But even I’m grossed out by the food sometimes in spite of the fact that the Menu on DU’s website is supposed to be healthy and actually sounds appealing. As someone that needs to process a several thousand calories a day while maintaining a diet I don’t feel Sodexo necessarily has my best interests in mind when I sit down to eat. I also question the amount of fried food produced on a daily basis as well as having pizza and hamburgers present at every meal, as we all know the amount of fat in all those foods. I think these foods are good alternatives for students if they really don’t like the other options that they have, but it seems to me that many students subsist on these items alone.
This should be disturbing to not just Sodexo but the student body, who not only are required to pay upwards of $1,000 a quarter their first year because they don’t have the option to cook for themselves, but who have to live with the consequences of eating food that they don’t like and may be bad for them.
It is not unusual to hear students grumbling about the poor quality or appeal of the food at the cafeterias on campus. Comments such as “the chicken is too dry,” and “look at the grease dripping off this pizza” are part of daily cafeteria conversation. To some cafeteria food and the employees who make it have become a joke, “I wonder what _____ (employees name omitted) has cooked today.” On some days when cafeteria patrons are particularly unimpressed with the food, they simply say, “I can’t take any more of this ____ (your choice of expletive)” and leave to go to Noodles & Co, Chipotle or another restaurant.
Some of this is to be expected with first year students in college as they can’t make their own food and it’s definitely not home cooking. However, to the extent that people can’t bear to eat at the cafeterias because they hate the food is bad business. If the cafeterias were real restaurants that didn’t have their customer base supplied to them, they would probably be out of business if they didn’t improve their food.
Now before you think I’m blaming the employees in the kitchens for the food available at the cafeteria, I’m not. They are saddled with the unenviable responsibility of feeding several thousand college students a day for most of the year. They are not necessarily the problem. They don’t make the menus and are tasked with efficiently producing as much food as they can for the hungry stomachs that don’t have much of a choice in where to go to eat. They make do with what they have and actually eat the food they make believe it or not.
No, the heart of the problem is really that Sodexo and the administration believe that it is OK to produce a poor product and give it to a captive customer base. The reality is that it isn’t. By producing healthier food that actually tastes good on a regular basis Sodexo and the school could make a killing in meal plan subscriptions from upperclassman who had good experiences with the cafeteria food and are happy to come back for more. The school and students both benefit from having better food that is healthier and appetizing in turn, worth paying for. That’s good business.
Sodexo is nothing more than another large corporation looking to maximize on profits. Because of this, they will buy cheaper food and hire cheaper labor to cut their costs as much as possible. Since Sodexo does this, they can sell their services for very cheap, which is why the University contracts them. If the University actually cared about health or quality, they probably would sign a contract with a more expensive, but higher quality company.
ReplyDeleteYour argument that increasing the quality of food will increase the amount of returning students is logical, but money always needs to be considered. Remember, when the price of the good increases, the quantity demanded drops (since less people can afford the good), thus, less students would sign up for the meal plan if the University increased prices.
I still agree that something needs to be done. As a freshman, I depend on Nelson food. I have stopped going there almost entirely. I am also a vegetarian and they have less/worse options for us. I am now running low on money since I spend so much on eating in alternative locations. You would think that after paying 50 grand a year, we would at least get decent food.
Only the delicious healthy food can make people healthy. If the food tastes horrible, no one will choose than even it’s healthy. People will go to have the fast food instead of those “healthy” foods or just skip the meal. Then these healthy foods will force people to be “unhealthy”.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that because of the basis customers who live on the campus, the Dining hall don’t need to be worried about their low-quality foods and weird dining time. The 2-year on-campus living requirement helps the Sodexho to bind those students who hate the food but are required to pay the money for the Sodexho. As no matter how terrible their foods are, which the Sodexho still can earn money from all the freshmen and sophomores, so why they need to pay more cost for the high quality of the food? The only thing they concerned is their profit without student’s health, student’s study and student’s motion. They are evil because they are a company that the profit is the biggest part of them.
I liked this project because it allowed me to explore and write about issues not just pertaining to the lives of student body but to my life as well. I learned that it takes as much to write an informative and persuasive blog in terms of the information needed to do so as any other assignment. I used pathos in my argument because I believed the the student body was at least as disappointed as I am with the subject of cafeteria food. In order to revise this blog post I will attempt to dig deeper into the economic repercussions of improving the cafeteria food in order to find a plausible solution and further enhance it's persuasiveness for people outside the student body.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Nick, for a thoughtful argument on the quality of the food in the dining halls here on campus. I was especially struck by your gesture of understanding to the staff who work in these kitchens. Your attempt not to blame them, but to still stay true to your frustration works well to enhance your own ethos.
ReplyDeleteA few things you might think about as you revise this post for your final portfolio: In the beginning of your post, you move rather quickly through the healthy options that are currently offered, and I think your argument might benefit from describing these options--tell us what kind of good food is available, even if it's not adequate. Then, near the end, you might build off of that as you recommend more precisely what you think Sodexho and the dining hall staff might do to solve this problem. Even some specific menu suggestions might be one way to offer a more precise solution.