I was particularly interested in attending this event with Paul Muscente and Chef Daniel because I used to work in Rose Dining. Because of that, I know how hard it is to work 5-hour shifts focused primarily on feeding people and making sure everyone is eating clean and cooked food. I can’t even imagine having to manage something as large as a dining hall, let alone Cornell’s entire Dining operations. Mr. Muscente told us that they serve 2.289 million meals in a year, which boils down to about 19,000 meals per day. That number is so ridiculous that I can’t even fathom it. He said there are about 600-800 students working for Cornell Dining every day. That’s almost like 1 person serving 24 people at the same time. Although I do really support Cornell Dining and I wish that it can continue these operations, it really was hard for me to juggle working in the dining hall and studying for tests/writing essays/doing homework. If I could suggest one change to dining right now, it would be having the option of choosing shorter work shifts. And it may be more complicated to get the right amount of staff for each half shift, but it’s much more flexible for students. Like those who can’t make it to the beginning of a shift can make it to the 2nd half if there is an option for that.

To go on to the main idea of my blog post today, I was actually surprised at how much creativity and thought is put into creating the menus and meals for the students. Chef Daniel mentioned that last semester there was a 5-cups of fruits and vegetables challenge going on and the idea behind that was so students would make vegetables the center of their plate, rather than mounds of protein. He said these motives challenge them to get creative and come up with different ways to entice students to eat vegetables. He talked about how he incorporates whole grains into foods that we don’t even know contained whole grains. Although I didn’t stay for the entire time to hear him talk about some examples of this, I do think some of the tactics work. I think the strategic placing of carbs right next to vegetables makes people get the food in an assembly-line sort of style, so they take vegetables with them when they eat. Overall, I really think Cornell Dining does an amazing job of keeping students fed and their brains healthy. One day, when I graduate, I hope that there will still be continual progress in persuading students to eat healthier.