Famed food writer and activist Michael Pollan wrote a book called Food Rules in which he outlines the 7 words ("Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.") and accompanying rules about eating. They’re super helpful, and you should definitely check out a summary of them here! You should also read his New York Times article, "Unhappy Meals" that sums up a lot of his ideas. So, as part of the conclusion for our experiment, we thought we would put together a list of our 7 rules for eating as a college student. Here’s what we came up with—we hope you enjoy!
1. Go off meal plan (if you can)
Dining hall food is okay. It’s reasonably nutritious if you’re conscious of what you eat, but overall, it’s pretty mediocre. By going off meal plan, you’ll develop cooking skills (the Ratty isn’t going to follow us into the real world!), have the option to choose what you’re eating, reduce your waste, save money (even eating purely locally) without taking up much more time, and have the opportunity to positively impact the environment using your dollar. Which brings us to our next point: If you’re on meal plan, and can’t go off because you’re a first year (which we totally feel you on), or if it’s just impractical for whatever reason, keep reading, because even if you can’t follow this rule the rest still apply!
2. Eat local
In this blog, we focused on how buying locally drastically cuts down the carbon release into the atmosphere. That’s a serious plus, but there are even more reasons! By eating locally you also support your local economy, establish relationships with the individuals growing your food, preserve green space in your community, increase your food safety, and get to be part of a local food community. We’ve elaborated on two easy ways to access local foods around Providence (Market Shares and the Pawtucket Winter Farmer’s Market), but there’s also the Brown University Farmer’s Market that’s literally on-campus for a few months a year, and East Side Marketplace and Whole Foods that also have local options, as well as AS220 if you get a hankering for eating out. We get that it’s not necessarily realistic to eat entirely locally (especially as a college student), though it’s definitely not as hard as you’d think. But even just shifting a portion of your purchases to local can really make a difference. If you’re eating in a Brown-dining hall, try and gravitate towards the locally produced goods, like the milk, the in-season produce, eggs, SoCo ice cream, cheese, and Iggy’s bread. Even Shanghai uses 50% local vegetables!
3. Eat what’s in season
If you’re eating locally, you’re already doing this. But, even if you’re not focused on eating locally, eating what’s in season is still really helpful, especially if you’re in a dining hall. Brown Dining Services (shout out to the interns who helped us with this project!) is doing a lot of great work trying to bring more local options into the dining hall. In many cases, a lot of the produce is beginning to be sourced locally, but that’s only possible for items that are in season. Check out this super handy chart and be cognizant of when it’s a good time to eat a certain food item, and when it’s not! Just because we can ship things from Mexico doesn’t mean we should.
4. Eat less (or zero) meat
To start, meat’s expensive on a college student diet. Secondly, meat is much worse for the environment. According to our Environmental Studies class, the production of meat emits more greenhouse gases than transportation, and it takes approximately 2-5 times more calories globally to produce meat instead of grains. Additionally, so much of the meat produced and eaten in the United States is produced in factory farms with horrific conditions. Animals are often forced into too small cages and never see sunlight. Additionally, employees are often paid minimum wage, subject to awful conditions, and are deported at their employer’s whim. That said, we understand that a lot of people really enjoy meat, and don’t want to remove it from their diets. To those people, we’d recommend focusing on eating less, more humanely produced meat. Look for buzzwords like “grass-fed” or “cage-free”. Think about where your meat comes from. If there is one thing NOT to eat in Brown Dining halls it is the meat, which does come from factory farms. An easy way to cut down on some of your meat production is “meatless” Mondays, which is as simple as it sounds! Go veggie one day a week, and positively impact the environment.
5. Eat simpler
By this, we definitely do not mean to eat “boring”. We mean to focus on procuring and eating high quality foods that are minimally processed. While tracking where our food came from, one thing that we noticed was how much harder it was to figure out where pre-processed foods come from and how many additional places they travelled before getting to our plates (leading to more CO2 leaked into the atmosphere!). Additionally, by eating more simply you also reduce how many different ingredients that need to make their way to your plate for you to enjoy a meal. It’s a win-win: you can better know what you are putting in your body AND positively impact the environment. Try setting a maximum number of ingredients for the foods you eat to have. For instance, decide not to eat foods with more than 5 ingredients (shout out to Kai’s section!) for a week.
6. Be aware
This rule refers both to the food itself, as well as where it comes from and how it was produced. It’s important to know what you’re eating for both your own health and the health of the environment. Know who grows, harvests, and packages your food. We focused mostly on where food comes from in this blog, but that’s definitely not the only consideration. It’s also important to be cognizant of whether or not your food was grown with pesticides (could have long term impacts on your health as well as the health of neighboring communities), and whether the people involved were treated fairly. Sometimes, it could be a toss up between a local farm that treats its employees well or a farm a few states away that treats its workers humanely and uses pesticides. This isn’t a black and white, good or evil type issue. There are nuances!
7. Enjoy delicious food with family and friends!
In our minds, food exists to be shared, start conversations, build community, and create fun. Have fun buying food, preparing it, eating it, and cleaning up. Do it with your friends, family, and loved ones! Food is fun! Yay yay yay!
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