Green Dining at Stanford
This entry is part of a photo blog assignment on environmentalism for an Environmental Rhetoric class at Stanford University. For more about this assignment, click here.
Every day at Stanford, thousands of students and other members of the community eat food provided by the university’s sixteen dining facilities. The food they prepare comes from all over California and the world. We were curious to investigate what green and sustainable dining entails and how it affects the community. In order to learn more about where the food we eat comes from, we spoke to several chefs in Stern Dining Hall, which serves six dorms. (For a video tour of the dining hall, go to www.circlepix.com/tour.htm?id=462676&refurl=) Chef Rudy Cordera, pictured below, proudly explained that many of the ingredients in the food he was serving were purchased locally and seasonally. We later discovered that Stanford’s dining facilities have won numerous national awards for their dedication to green and sustainable dining practices.
The dining halls are committed to not only providing many vegan, vegetarian, and organic choices at every meal, but also to sustainable, local food options. The typical meal above featured not only vegetarian and vegan dishes but also locally grown food. For example, the lentils and rice are vegetarian and the apple came from a local orchard. Some of the foods’ origins were more mysterious, however; the grains and dry goods (as seen in the storage room pictured below) were purchased wholesale from large companies that ship from many locations.
When meals are over, students compost food and paper products, which are reused to fertilize soil and grow more food, thereby reducing overall waste. A chef we spoke to also mentioned that in the kitchens, very little food is thrown away and most leftovers are “reinvented” into new dishes. Students from “SPOON,” an on-campus service organization, also transport uneaten food to local soup kitchens and homeless shelters.
Stanford works hard to satisfy the appetites of a variety of eaters, from vegetarians like Kate to meat-lovers like Simone and Anneliese. As one of the first dining halls certified as a green business, Stanford Dining is equally committed to seeking out sustainable sources of food. Bon appétit!
By Kate Erickson, Simone Haynesworth, and Anneliese Rice
Comments
For an amazing global tour of "what the world eats" in photos and comparative statistics, check out _Time_ magazine's series of three photo essays.
In Part I there's a great photo of the Ahmed family of Cairo and what they typically eat in a week -- which looks wonderfully appealing and healthy, not to mention a lot less expensive, compared to what the American families featured in the photo essay eat!!
Part I: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519,00.html
Part II: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1645016,00.html
Part III: http://aolsvc.timeforkids.kol.aol.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1667690,00.html
These photos are from the book _Hungry Planet: What the World Eats_ by Peter Menzel and Faith Daluisio. We looked at some of the photos in class yesterday and talked about patterns in global consumption and about health, equity, and "happiness."
Posted by: Carolyn Ross | October 1, 2008 11:23 AM
Stanford's dining halls truly are embracing our current green movement. Our chefs' quest to prepare foods with more local, organic, and healthy ingredients helps us work our way to a more sustainable living. Not only does preparing more natural, local foods benefit our environment, but it also helps our bodies perform efficiently, and it tastes great!
Posted by: Alysha de Souza | October 2, 2008 01:00 AM
What a great movement to include planning of campus food choices in the 'Stanford Goes Green' movement. Choosing locally grown food probably makes it easier to offer more natural, less processed meals. lot of the time, what discourages people from eating healthy is that less wholesome choices are faster and more easily available. Colleges everywhere should take this example to encourage healthier lifestyles.
Posted by: Ghada Elshimi | October 11, 2008 11:51 AM
Very nice post!
I would love that to happen here in our university instead of having Mcdonalds and pizza hut! i love to cook my self and i always eat healthy and organic! We have a garden at home where we plant some veggetables and they are delicious. Good work on the green movement.
Posted by: Marwan Roushdy | October 13, 2008 10:22 AM
My mum’s a doctor, who specializes in nutrition; and she’s been educating the public on exacting what Stanford’s doing, providing healthy and environmentally friendly products. So it’s awesome to see it’s being implemented somewhere!
Recently Egypt’s hotels have been giving their uneaten food to the unfortunate, and it’s been a great success so far.
Hopefully some time soon AUC will start going green.
I hope the good work continues on!
Posted by: Winnie Nadi | October 13, 2008 05:23 PM