The Nature of College. James J. Farrell
is the main meal of the day. Most nights, there are numerous entrées: meat and potatoes, hamburgers (again), a pasta dish, pizza perhaps, along with a soup and salad bar—and dessert. There’s a lot to choose from, but in many college cafeterias a student doesn’t have to select just one. Some respond by overeating, perhaps also in part to save money on between-meal snacks. They can take anything that looks good to them because it’s no big deal if they don’t finish. For most students the cafeteria is an everyday occurrence, but for billions of people, past and present, it’s an unimaginable feast.
Even though there’s lots of food in the cafeteria, students also eat elsewhere. In fact, there’s hardly anyplace they don’t eat. On campus, as in America at large, eating is no longer restricted in space and time. The library is sometimes off-limits, but that’s about it. Many colleges operate snack bars or a convenience store, and larger universities often feature fast food outlets in student unions. Virtually all colleges also have lucrative vending machine contracts, so there are snacks and soft drinks available at all hours. At night, after studying, Joe and his friends might order a pizza or go barhopping, with salty snacks as a complement and catalyst to the beer. The easy availability of food on campus often contributes to the phenomenon known colloquially as “the freshman fifteen.”
Eating occurs almost everywhere, but food isn’t always the focus of attention. Sometimes meals are just a break from the boredom of the day. Students almost always approach the cafeteria with a crowd of friends, with teammates, or with a boyfriend or a girlfriend. There are stories to tell, and ideas to share. Someone needs to bitch about Professor Pointless or ask about a reading assignment. And of course, everyone is there to scope out potential dates, catch a glimpse of a “caf crush,” or see who’s sitting with whom. We consume food in the cafeteria, but we also produce community.
When the eating is over, trays disappear through a window to the dish room. There, the dishes and silverware are washed, and the food scraps and napkins become trash. By the end of each week, the average student produces a pound or two of garbage.1
Most of us don’t think much about eating, and we seldom pause to really savor the food. Students rarely analyze the cafeteria, but it’s amazing if you think about it. It’s one of the few places on campus where all of the senses are stimulated. The food comes in a cornucopia of shapes, colors, and textures, while meats, sauces, and french fries emanate mouthwatering scents. The clink of silverware, the buzz of conversation, the sizzle of the grill, the slurp of coffee and pop machines, the occasional crack of dropped dishes combine to create a din of white noise. Students don’t always touch their food, but they experience what food technologists call “mouthfeel” every time they eat it. These tactile sensations complement their sense of taste, including the familiar flavors of favorite foods or the spicy novelty of a new ethnic entrée. All of these stimuli make the cafeteria a center of sensuality, but most miss this amazing appeal to our sensual human nature.
What does all this cooking and eating mean? On one level, it’s pretty simple: Students need food. College students who don’t eat generally don’t graduate. The cafeteria, then, is a place where they come into contact with their animal nature, the basic need for sustenance. Eating is one part of a process of making nature into human nature, as our digestive system transforms plants and animals into us—our body tissues as well as the energy we need to function. Like other animals, college students are solar-powered organisms because all food is stored sunshine. When they eat Cheerios in the morning, they’re eating the fruits of living oats. When they order eggs, they’re looking forward to eating the reproductive cells of chickens. When they ask for a side of bacon, they’re requesting a portion of a pig that’s no longer breathing and snorting. Food is the nature we define as edible, one important part of our social construction of nature.
If we are what we eat, what are we?
Glibly, I am Bon Appétit’s daily chore (today, I am an omelet, mushrooms, onions, etc.). But what are these things that I am eating? I am the sun’s energy slowed down, I am the water of countless rivers, I am diesel fuel and deadly toxins, I am a GMO. As I look closer, I see that I am carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, and hydrogen arranged in a spectacular array. Like Joseph’s technicolor coat, I am constantly shimmering with the movement of my cells, their enzymes, and the constant shivering of their constituent atoms. What am I? I am stardust. In my body are atoms that have been in existence for billions of years, moving in and out of new arrangements with those around them. I am the soil of many countries around the world. My oxygen atoms have been breathed in and out, fallen with water, and have been individually expressed in snowflakes. I am magical. I am chemical. I am what I eat.
Sam Dunn, St. Olaf Student
On another level, the alimentary world is pretty complicated because, whether it tastes good or not, the planet’s on the plate. When students eat in the cafeteria—as in most homes and restaurants in America—they say, in effect, “I’d like my meal. But I’d also like an entrée of family farm with a gravy of global warming. Give me a side of topsoil with a pinch of pesticide, a spray of fertilizer, and a smidgen of genetic modification. Pour me 50 gallons of water and a cup of petroleum. And for dessert, I’d like a slice of yellowcake, topped off with dollop of delusion.” Though they often don’t realize it, students’ forks, knives, and spoons are all agricultural implements. Consuming cafeteria fare, they help to produce a food system with environmental effects that change the world. So even though Joe and Jo College only eat when they’re not in class, the cafeteria is another classroom, and it can teach a lot about the common sense we all consume with our food.
The Hidden Curriculum of the Cafeteria
The first lesson of Cafeteria 101 is that food is a social construction, which doesn’t just mean that there’s a recipe involved. Different cultures define food differently, teaching us what counts as edible, how to prepare and present it, how to serve it, and how to eat it. Eating seems so natural that we often forget how many cultural rules we follow without thinking. We could eat dogs and cats, but we don’t, because we adhere to cultural conventions. We might eat all our food raw, but we don’t, because cooking is the cultural process we’ve chosen for making our food more digestible. We might eat without utensils, scooping up food with our hands, but we don’t, because we see forks, knives, and spoons as signs of civilization. We are what we eat, and not just physically, because diet defines human community. Different peoples eat differently, and culinary identities are the basis of what we call “ethnic” cuisines. In the cafeteria, students eat Chinese, Mexican, Italian, and French, but all with an American twist. Taken together, cultural rules about food determine both what we can eat and how we get our food from the earth.2
Another lesson in the cafeteria curriculum concerns privilege, because the cafeteria reinforces both American affluence and the ideology of choice, the idea that we deserve options in our lives. It simply seems “natural,” but the standard college cafeteria is cornucopian, implicitly assuring students of the fertility of the world and the fertile ingenuity of the people who convert nature’s bounty to all this food. In circumstances like these, even though we’re not at Burger King, we feel deep down that we can “have it our way.”3
Still, some students are perpetually dissatisfied with cafeteria food, carping about “the same old crap” being served week after week. But the “crappiness” of cafeteria food isn’t usually a statement of quality: It’s a statement of expectations and entitlement, and a statement of American values. One of the most common college complaints, for example, is that “there’s nothing to eat” in the cafeteria. As a literal statement, this is demonstrably false. But as a statement of our American expectations, it’s delectably illuminating. This complaint isn’t a statement about food or scarcity, but about individualism and novelty. We want food that satisfies our tastes, and we want it at every meal.
