College boosts cuisine to get off the worst campus food list

[asteriskea]

<p>“Campus Food From Around the Corner” highlights the growing trend to “buy local” fresh farm food, taking into account cost and quality, at Carleton, Kenyon and Berea Colleges:</p>

<p>

It wasn’t long ago that, to students, the phrase “local food” meant eating at the dorm cafeteria rather than at the restaurant across campus. Many now see their role as consumers through a different lens. Part of the ever-growing sustainability movement is the doctrine that buying products from regional businesses and farms is more desirable than getting them from distributors that ship products across the country. The argument: Food less traveled is fresher and tastier, and going local reduces fossil fuel consumption that contributes to global warming.</p>

<p>“With this sensitivity to the many ways in which our food reflects our values and advances our goals as responsible citizens, eating local has become a guiding principle in our food habits,” said Mikaela Hagen, a Carleton senior who manages the Farm House, in an online entry about local buying…

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/01/local[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/01/local&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>and according to the latest going green report (the College Sustainability Report Card):

Increasing use of local food drives significant grade improvement. The number of schools reporting that they buy at least some food from local farms/producers grew from 63 to 84 percent. The “A” grades in Food & Recycling almost doubled, jumping from 20 to 38 percent

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<p><a href=“http://www.endowmentinstitute.org/sustainability/CollegeSustainabilityReportCard2008.pdf[/url]”>http://www.endowmentinstitute.org/sustainability/CollegeSustainabilityReportCard2008.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;