Katie Ambrose Sotosky

Out of Class Project

Fall 2004

Where Does Our Food Come From?

Food is an endless source of obsession in our society.  It is easy to say that almost every human being loves to eat.  But what are people eating? Here at Fort Lewis College the problem is that we do not really know where any of the food comes from or what it is made of.  On campus no one out of 20 students I asked, actually knew where the food they ate in the cafeteria came from. 

With many Americans, food has no ethical value.  This is a principle problem not knowing and being informed of the food we ingest.  Our relationship to food echoes our connection to the earth.  Knowing where our food comes from strengthens our bond to the life we live with.

 With my evaluation I intended to find out where the food we eat truly comes from here at Fort Lewis College.  Also I intended to find a way to inform the consumers of the food and its value.  I feel the more local and organic the food we consume, the healthier and more nutritional it is.  My purpose was to figure out how locally our food is produced to see how far it travels, how nutritional, and how ethically moral it is to eat. 

It is important to know these things because in today’s technological advanced world with no true understanding of nature, one cannot be certain whether the meat they eat was injected with growth hormones or antibiotics. They do not know the effects of their fruits and vegetables being waxed, died, sprayed, and exposed to radiation.  They do not know if their grains are stripped of nutrients and if their milk is full of bovine growth hormones and puss.  All these mutations done to our food truthfully harms our bodies in the long and short terms.  Not only do they impair humans, but they can also be dangerous to the environment.  Introducing new drugs and chemicals to the natural world can have extreme effects.

Many colleges are on the move to make a difference in their food service programs.  Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington has been a leader in the dining services at their campus because Bon Appétit, a food service company, directs their dining services.  All of their food is vegan, vegetarian, or organic that comes from their own on-campus garden or local growers.  St. Bonaventure University in New York received a grant that was used to provide its school with many fresh local produce from local farmers.  Macalester College in Minnesota purchases seasonal and regional produce from local farmers within a 150-mile radius and gives support back to farmers to sustain their lands.  There are many colleges that are changing their ways and supporting locally and organically grown foods for their dining services. 

Fort Lewis College has attempted to do it in the past.  Downstairs in the CUB there was an organic salad bar set up that used all naturally grown products.  It didn’t last very long though because people weren’t buying it, estimate like 20 students a week.  This made the cost of keeping it there too expensive then what they were selling.  Also there was a nutritional booth set up in the Student Life Center where organic and healthy food were sold, but that again didn’t sell very well and was stopped.  Although now the CUB does carry some organic fruits and organic coffee, I feel it’s still not good enough. 

Currently here at Fort Lewis College some of our foods are being bought locally.  This is true, most are bought within the state, but the college buys from suppliers who get their ingredients from someone else.  In my research it seemed like I kept going forever trying to find out where the food came from.  We buy it from Shamrock, who buys each product from someone else, who bought their ingredients from someone else, to somewhere down the long line it had to be grown at a farm or factory, but which one we can’t be sure of.  And its not only the college buying from Shamrock, it is basically all the restaurants in Durango I found out.

Dave Kerns, the Sodexho guy, told me some of the places in which Fort Lewis orders some of their food products from.  Dairy comes from Meadow Gold, meats from Excel (a little from James Ranch), breads from Earth Grains and Bimbo.  The fruits and vegetables come from basically everywhere, some organic some not, but the people in the offices weren’t sure exactly where they come from either.  We do though get tomatoes from other countries in the winter and I’m sure a bunch of other crap as well.  I emailed some of these places and tried to get in contact with them. 

I talked to Shamrock and was told that they couldn’t answer my questions because they didn’t know the answers (to where the food came from mainly) and that they would email me back after they did some research.  It was three weeks and I never heard back. I called back and they told me that I needed to contact Sodexho for those answers.  Sodexho told me to contact the distributor, Shamrock.  I figured they really didn’t know or maybe they just didn’t want to tell me.

Out of the few responses I got back, Bimbo, the company from where our bread products come from, told me that they get their ingredients from other companies that they were not clear on either.

We order our ingredients from lots of different companies.  For example,
nut companies sell us nuts, yeast companies sell us yeast, sugar companies
sell us sugar, flour mills sell us flour, etc. – Erik Rinne, Consumer Affairs Coordinator, Bimbo Bakeries USA     (And I am almost sure all these companies in which they get their ingredients is a big combination of all different farms and factories’ products mixed together.)

           

As of now, to attempt to make alternatives to know exactly where our food comes from and how healthy it is to eat seems out of sight.  Fort Lewis College has a 10-year contract with Sodexho that will be up in 3 more years.  In that time before they have to set up a new contract, the college will get a bunch of offers from other food providers. One of the better providers I thought to be was Bon Appetit.  They offer unique and fresh ideas with their food as well as nutritional strategies.  But still Bon Appetit would not supply the college with the food, only service it. So the problem is still, where does that damn food come from?

I found out that our food situation is not that big of a concern here on campus among the students.  I sensed in doing this project that people do not know and do not care to know where our food comes from.  If the consumers are not willing to be educated and aware of the facts of food then we cannot change that.  It is the people’s own opinion and lifestyle that controls the market.  We should not have to spend all our time and effort into informing and making expensive changes if it is not going to get us anywhere. Oddly enough, just today a woman in front of me at the A La Carte food service in Bernt Hall specifically asked for NON-organic fruits.  She wanted the kind of banana that looked appealing.  Big, yellow, and fake. 

If people are asking for non-organic, how can we ever get organic and local at the college?  In a reply from James Ranch, a small supplier of meat to Fort Lewis, I was told this:

We see three options: 1) Get the student body interested in demanding the better beef and buying it (how, I'm not sure), 2) Get Sodexho to use our beef
exclusively--for burgers and other cuts, too (they would have to pay a little
more for our product, but could get a lot of public response from the fact that they are giving the campus healthy, local beef), 3) Give up the idea and admit
defeat--people are not interested in eating better, and Sodexho won't break the
mold of corporate food services. – Kay James, James Ranch Grass-Finished Beef

 

            First I think what the college needs to do is make the people more aware of the food they eat and can do that by offering a class.  A class that informs students of the value of food and gives them insight to changing their eating habits to support the earth. It would make an enormous difference.  To propose and get a new class set up, we would need to find someone who will teach it (someone educated and passionate about the topic), the right books and information needed to teach it, and a detailed outline of the course. 

Ø      Thematic course

Ø      Two hour course, two days a week

Ø      Objective: To inform and make students aware of the value of food by researching, identifying, and discussing what makes up food in today’s society in hopes of sustaining the earth.

Ø      Plans:

o       Start by taking survey and finding out student’s current diets and thought/knowledge of food today.

o       Introduce and read through books (Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, etc.)

o       Watch films (Future of Food, Super Size Me, etc.)

o       Have classroom lectures about current issues involving food, moral and physical effects of food, and ways of reforming its status.

o       Offer organic and local foods in the classroom ever so often to introduce foods not often bought by students to develop interest.

o       Assign papers to be written about personal influences of books and films.

o       Take field trips to local farms to see how things are grown and raised, possibly even help out at the farm.

o       Evaluate progression of course to see how much, if any, it changed the kinds of food the student ate and their thoughts of it.

(I understand there are courses now, such as in the Agriculture area, that deal with farming and produce, and ethical classes such as this that bring up such topics, but I feel a course directed more towards the future of food and its true impact in reality amongst individuals would be more progressive)

Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could go in and put stickers/labels on the food served in the cafeteria now telling the people how much fat they will gain if they eat something and how unhealthy and gross the stuff that’s in it truly is?  We could also offer natural alternatives on the labels too, to promote student influences or better foods to buy.  I mean if I was going to go get a burger (which I never would) and it told me I was going to be 5 pounds heavier from eating it, I definitely wouldn’t get it.  We could start a student protest against the food.  No more Sodexho, we want local!

Buying locally and organic foods can cost more then the commercial foods we buy now.  If the college wanted to set up our dining services to have that food, it would cost a little more money.  Because we don’t want to take money away from our education (and paying a little more for local foods is much healthier for you and your bank account than paying much more for medical bills and doctor's visits later on) the college would need to apply and get some grants to support the food transform. 

There are places and farms locally that grow and supply organic food, free of chemicals and done in an ethical way.  James Ranch is a good meat provider that we are barely a part of anymore because of people’s interest or knowledge of it.  If we would start only buying from James Ranch I feel our college would be improving, supporting local farmers, and making healthier lives.  Another good source is Durango Natural Foods.  They offer wholesome natural foods with fresh, organic produce, natural foods deli, and a full line of quality grocery products. Working through them would improve the school’s status as well.  Having a farmers market or even our own garden would be very helpful in getting the college a more sustainable food program.

I researched other places to get grants other then the NWF.  Some places that I found were at www.csrees.usda.gov, www.sare.org, www.rurdev.usda.gov,  and www.fdncenter.org.  It seemed like if someone took the time to set up one well written grant proposal, we could use it to apply for several grants, enough to fund the project.  (Project, as in getting a class set up and beginning to buy from local and organic foods)

Overall I feel that things such as organic and local foods should have been realized over 20-30 years ago. It’s almost too late to be realizing this now, but there is still so much that can be learned and turned around to save the planet.  Here at Fort Lewis College, getting a plan set up to get natural and local food in the cafeteria wouldn’t be that hard.  We wouldn’t have to make any big structural changes in the buildings or buy anything new but the food.  I feel if we could just get the money and out of this contract with Sodexho, having healthy food would be easy.  Every other college seems to be doing it, why couldn’t we?    We can. We just need to built interest and have support from the people for better, healthy, organic, local food. 

 

Interesting Facts: