On November 4^th, the Becker-Rose House Café hosted Paul Muscente, the Associate Director of West Campus Dining, and Chef Daniel Czebiniak, head chef of Flora Rose House. I remember a few weeks ago, Mary Jo Dudley, and Justine Vanden Heuvel came in and discussed who grows, and who picks our food. We had the opportunity to learn and ask questions about agriculture in the state of New York. Although we learned about how the vegetables grown in farms reach our dining halls, this week enabled us to ask about food preparation.

As Muscente and Chef Czebiniak talked about efforts to reduce food waste at Cornell, I though back to an article I recently read. Roughly one third of food produced, about 1.3 billion tons of food, in the world goes to waste. In May 2015, France passed legislation, which bans supermarkets from throwing away food. The legislation is a step to combat food waste, and any unsold food is to be donated to charity or used for animal feed. Supermarkets found throwing food out can face heavy fines or even imprisonment. It was great to hear about Cornell dining taking initiatives to reduce food waste. Some of these initiatives include making adjustments in food preparation to use all parts of vegetables and produce. Chef Daniel Czebiniak talked about the different ways to prepare hearts of palm; he discussed the various ways of preparing hearts of palm and how to use all parts. Being able to use all parts of produce is one way of reducing food waste. Dining halls also reduction the amount of protein consumed, offering more options like vegetables and fruits rather than proteins, like meat. The proteins are also served by dining staff. I often see other students piling on food onto their plates and barely eat anything. By having staff serve the proteins, students have limited serving sizes. I believe that this greatly reduces food waste and though many students feel like they shouldn’t be limited, there is nothing preventing students from getting seconds once they finish what is on their plate.

I hope that Cornell continues to take initiatives to reduce food waste. Hopefully, one day Cornell can partner with local food kitchens and charities to donate food and fruits to those less fortunate.