THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 14, 1995 TAG: 9504140043
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KARA OGLETREE CAMPUS, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
MORE THAN 333,000 pounds of food found its way into trash bins instead of students' stomachs at James Madison University last year.
Every ounce was tossed into the trash by the students themselves at JMU's self-service, buffet-style Gibbons Dining Hall.
As the trays head down the conveyor belt, whole platefuls of pasta, chicken strips, bowls of fruit or vegetables are flung into the pulper and mashed into a substance resembling runny tuna salad flecked with brightly colored splotches. This mixture oozes from the pulper's metal chute into a large garbage can beneath the machine.
By sampling 200 used trays in Gibbons last school year, the university found that an average of 25 cents worth of food gets left on each tray at every meal. About $300,000 worth of food, more than 10 percent of the dining hall's annual budget, was wasted by students piling their trays with more food than they ate.
JMU sophomore Stacie Dietz explained her habit of leaving food on her tray by saying, ``Usually it's just misjudging. It's not a matter of intention. You pick food that looks good, and when you get a big, heaping pile of it, you take a bite, and surprise, it's not.''
The University of Virginia's John Darmstadt, manager for dining services, has found similar problems in U.Va.'s operation, which is cafeteria-style. Students are served by cafeteria workers there, but they can get virtually unlimited portions.
U.Va. students sometimes ask for three glasses of orange juice and drink only one or take four hamburgers and leave two for the garbage, Darmstadt said. ``There's an awful lot of waste from the standpoint that the students will take more than they eat,'' he said.
For many college students, the all-you-can-eat style at some universities provides a switch after years of getting circumscribed portions in public school cafeterias. Most area schools operate this way, but at Norfolk Academy students eat lunch ``family style.'' Diners are either served or serve themselves at the table. Sophomore Lauren Alder said waste is not a problem because ``you pretty much know what you like and don't like. Usually, when we scrape the plates, there is not an excessive amount (of waste) at all.''
JMU's dining services director Rick Larson, said, ``An important part of our program is the ability to serve yourself, but it's also the most expensive. Since the buffet style is the hallmark of our program, we need to educate students not to eat with their eyes.''
Sophomore Casey Hoipkemeier, who works in the dish room, said, ``My mother would have a cow if she saw my plate was that full of stuff I didn't eat.''
JMU senior Jarrett Steer, another dish room worker, said students are ``too lazy to get up and get in line again'' if they choose to have a second serving.
Larson said the money spent on the $300,000 of wasted food last year could have been used for developing new programs to reduce the price of dining contracts.
U.Va.'s Darmstadt agreed: ``Those extra orange juices and hamburgers are all built into the price they (students) pay. Trying to slow the waste could contain the cost if they would watch what they take.''
Neither Old Dominion nor Norfolk State University has studied food waste. But officials at both schools said they thought it was minimal.
In the cafeteria system, ``students usually get basically what they want because of the variety instead of just picking up something because it's there,'' said NSU's food services director Pam Rivers-Smith.
ODU dining services director Jack Donahue said students start with small portions but can come back for more as often as they like. ``They're really pretty responsible,'' he said.
On the other end of the spectrum is the responsibility of university dining services to reduce its own waste. ``We're very highly motivated to reduce production waste,'' Larson said. ``It's in our operation's best interest.''
Fine-tuning food production estimates has been a major concern, Larson said. Managers of Gibbons Dining Hall have worked on matching their production rates with students' consumption rates.
To determine how much food to prepare, the dining hall uses a computer program that analyzes previous serving information. In conjunction with these results, managers must consider outside factors such as the time of day and weather.
In the Virginia Beach public school system, administrators found that after they added food choices about a decade ago, waste was cut 75 percent. Now, for instance, students can choose from two vegetables and two fruits, said James Ratliff, director of food services.
All four universities re-use the food they haven't dished out. ``If it's servable, we re-use it within 24 hours. Most things can be utilized at the next meal,'' Rivers-Smith said. MEMO: Kara Ogletree is a sophomore at James Madison University. by CNB