If you spend enough time looking at a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese before whipping up a quick lunch, you might realize that there isn’t all that much “real” food in the tasty orange cheese powder.
The movement for organic and locally produced food is still sweeping the nation, and Dining Services at the U is on board. For the past three semesters they have been helping Willem Schott, a junior in pre-med and health promotion and education, run the Real Food Calculator, a national project that helps schools assess the percentage of real food they are serving.
Schott has analyzed more than $1 million in invoices for Dining Services, tallying every food purchase to be sold on campus and categorizing the purchases. Items that were either locally produced, “fair,” ecologically sound or humane, counted in the “real food” category. The qualifications are stringent, but the U is serving a higher percentage of real food compared to other institutions — 11.53 percent of its food is real, according to the calculator.
The program has a national goal to make 20 percent of food purchases “real” by 2020.
For the project, Schott focused on six weeks of invoices for Fall Semester and four weeks of invoices for spring. He worked directly with companies such as Wasatch Meats to make sure their products met qualifications.
Schott analyzed more than 750 products offered by more than 20 vendors on campus and got specific breakdowns that document the U’s real food habits.
Schott said that 63.5 percent of all baked goods on campus qualify as real food, and 7.16 percent of all purchases were local and community-based.
“As we’re planning for the farmers market season, we will be increasing the numbers of real food purchases,” said Katie Hunt, the sustainability coordinator for Dining Services and Schott’s supervisor for the project.
Chartwells is looking to purchase extra produce this growing season and freeze fruits and vegetables for the winter season.
Hunt thinks the results of Schott’s analysis could be huge for helping students to see campus food as appealing and natural.
“It’s really difficult … to overcome that perception of institutional food,” Hunt said. “We struggle with that as well.”
The findings will be a useful tool for Dining Services, Hunt said.
“We can show your campus community that you’re eating real food,” she said. “[11.53 percent,] that’s a large amount, so we can really push for our consumers, that we’re serving good food.”
Schott said working on the analysis made him start to see food differently. Even though he had focused on eating healthy food previously, he left the project realizing that how a food is produced plays into health and should play into our decisions about what we eat.
“Even if you eat a lot of tomatoes, a lot of times those are sprayed with pesticides,” he said. “I was definitely health-conscious before going in, but now it’s understanding more the benefits and what that means in terms of your overall health.”