I spent this past weekend on the campus of the Claremont Colleges, a group of five schools located about an hour outside of Los Angeles, visiting and eating with my old friend Hal. Food was, literally, everywhere: salad bars, burger bars, omelet stations, deli meats, pizzas, lasagna, beans and rice, vegan options, vegetarian options, and of course, the dessert bar. As I wandered around the cafeteria on the campus of Pomona College I found myself stopping for a slice of pizza and eating it on my way over to the salad bar. On the way to the salad bar, maybe the French fries caught my eyes, or the garlic bread, inducing me to pull over to load up my tray a bit more.

I’m not exactly sure what to make of the experience. On the one hand, I’m slightly ashamed of the way in which I overate. Being presented with mountains of free, delicious, and varied food led me (at least for the first few meals) to put anything that looked good and was labeled vegetarian on my plate. As a Post-Modern-Orthodox Jew (we can talk about what that means later), I’m liberal enough with my observance of Kashrut that I’ll eat vegetarian food in the dining hall or restaurants, even though they serve non-kosher meat. As I forced myself to finish my meals rather than throw out my unfinished food, Hal laughed mirthfully and explained that it took a couple of weeks to get used to all the options and plan your meal accordingly.

I also have to wonder at the entire concept of the all-you-care-to-eat (and more!) attitude of this college dining hall, which was very different from my college eating experience at the NYU; which included the kosher cafeteria, neighborhood restaurants, and thankfully, my well equipped and strictly kosher dormitory kitchen. The sheer volume of food waste produced by this system was staggering to me. While I did notice that most of the students had learned the dangers of the buffet and took reasonable portions, just about every table I saw contained what amounted to one or two uneaten meals. The smoothie-station that made my drink with frozen berries threw out about ¾ of a smoothie for every cup a student received (though I asked for, and received, the dregs of my raspberry/strawberry/mango/soy milk concoction). As I sat down with Hal and his friends to enjoy my brunch (while worrying about the all the energy it took to freeze and transport those berries), I noticed a brochure on the table by the catering company managing that particular dining hall. I learned that the chicken served was all hormone free, that sweet potatoes are extremely healthy (which is why they are on the menu all semester), and that all the milk served is produced without the use of bovine growth hormones. Well, “that’s nice,” I thought, “but what about my factory farmed eggs, and mono-cropped fruits and vegetables? There’s a lot more to healthy eating than chicken and eggs.”

It seems to me that this type of institutionalized eating is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, these college students are almost certainly eating better than they would if they had to prepare their own meals. On the other hand, having all of our meals prepared by others allows us to almost totally abdicate our responsibility for how our food gets to our plate. Organic, fair-trade coffee and hormone free milk are great when they are in the school cafeteria, but it seems like those buzzwords can serve to whitewash (or “greenwash”) the rest of our fare. For $1800 a semester, slightly more than it cost me to eat in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, you’re not just paying for your meals (or more accurately, for your child’s), you’re paying to have someone else think about that now famous question, “what will I eat for dinner, tonight?” That being said, I’m not one to cook every meal that I eat myself, let alone grow, process, and prepare it from scratch. I eat at restaurants when I can, and I surely enjoyed eating at the Claremont Cafeterias (as my waistband can attest), but have to say that I’m truly grateful that I didn’t spend 4 years enmeshed in a food system where my biggest concern is trying to decide which dining hall I’m going to eat in tonight.