After almost two months of trying everything I could think of, I am finally off my school's required meal plan. Whitman requires students to be on a meal plan for two years, so this semester was going to be my last. Our plans cost $2620 per semester for the cheapest option, and for that amount, you get either 21 meals a week, or 14 meals a week plus $150 "Flex dollars" which can be spent on individually priced items in our cafe. Most people can't eat 21 meals a week, so they pick the second plan, and if you do the math on it, it works out to $11.27 per meal.
My reasons for wanting to be off the plan were numerous. Obviously, it's absurdly expensive. Beyond that, though, it's incredibly difficult to be a vegetarian who doesn't eat soy-based products and tries to avoid processed carbs (eg. pasta). You're going to end up eating a lot of plain black beans and salad bar stuff. And, I love milk and meat, and I wanted to be able to eat them without spending half of my wages from Safeway on raw milk (which costs $5.50 for a half gallon over here). And my schedule is such that trying to structure my life around dining hall hours is really stressful. I work on weekends during brunch most of the time. I have classes that overlap with most of the dinner hour. I'm busy from 11am-4pm solid on Mondays, so I can't really grab lunch. Feeding myself last year was a complex task involving three days advance notice and lots of Tupperware to get me through my weekend shifts at work.
I didn't want to petition to be off the plan, because I've heard horror stories from other people who have tried. Bon Appetit, the company Whitman contracts with for food, is absurdly invested in their image as a good-doing, sustainable, accommodating company, and they want to make money. It's far better for them if they can work with you to provide for your needs while keeping you on the meal plan. I've heard of them allowing students to take raw ingredients and cook for themselves, or specially preparing meals for students with very specific medical conditions, rather than letting them off. Based on talking to friends, the only cases where students seemed to have been successful in petitioning were based on completely false grounds. One made up a psychological condition where he couldn't let anyone else touch his food; someone else made up a gastrointestinal problem and got a doctor's note for it.
I didn't want to resort to lying, so as my options narrowed, I decided to petition on honest grounds. I told them that meat and dairy are important parts of my diet, and that the only ranch I feel comfortable eating meat from is Thundering Hooves. I told them I only drink local, grass-fed milk, and that my milk is unpasteurized whenever possible. I was told by the Bon Appetit staff person whose job it is to deal with special requests that they made efforts to get Country Fed Natural Beef from Eastern Oregon, and I explained to her my objections to public lands ranching. I was told that most people who've petitioned successfully had religious grounds. I told her that the reasons I eat what I do are rooted in a ethical framework that I believe as deeply and take as seriously as most people take their religion, and that the fact that I didn't have 3000 years of tradition or millions of other followers behind me shouldn't make my beliefs any less valid. I was told that the college works to accommodate special requests, but that they can't do a perfect job with everyone. I said that I understood, and I didn't expect them to provide these foods specially for me, but that the college is obviously willing to accommodate some special requests (vegetarians and vegans), and that my requests were no less valid, just less common.
And I got her to admit that Bon Appetit was unable to provide for my dietary requirements. The next day, I got an email from the Residence Life office informing me that my petition to be off the meal plan had been approved.
I was so happy that this actually worked, especially after so many people said no to me for different reasons or told me that trying to petition on ethical food grounds would never work. I firmly believe that everyone should have the right and ability to control what they eat, and I think that interacting with Walla Walla's incredibly diverse food system is a crucial component of my education. I work at Safeway, volunteer at the co-op, write articles about food banks and stay up until 2am on the weekend talking about food justice.
Of course, this whole experience has also served to underscore how privileged I am to be able to make these choices for myself. I feel better about what I eat now than I have for most of my life, but the only reason I'm able to do this is because I'm a) absurdly conscientious of the impacts food systems have and b) bankrolled by my parents. And that's the crucial problem with food. You shouldn't need a ton of money or a degree in environmental studies to know what to eat. You shouldn't have to be a white, upper-middle class college student to have access to good, healthy food. You shouldn't be able to buy factory-farmed milk for $2.19 a gallon in the grocery store while cows, soil, agricultural workers, American taxpayers and streams pay the true cost. Meanwhile, real milk that doesn't externalize these costs is $6.50 a gallon at the co-op, putting it out of almost everyone's price range. If you want it unpasteurized, the cost goes up to $11.
So it's great that I can cook for myself and keep learning about food. It's great that I can support the co-op and tell everyone who comes through my line at Safeway that they should stop buying our organic milk and go to the co-op instead. It's great that I'm surrounded by people who understand that the industrial food system is killing people, land, living beings and the planet as a whole. But it's not enough. It never will be.
I don't know what a truly sustainable food system would look like. It would involve a lot more gardens. Monsanto and Safeway wouldn't exist. Most people would produce some or all of their own food. Washingtonians wouldn't eat oranges or bananas, and people living in Utah and Nevada probably wouldn't eat much beef. People would spend more time feeding themselves and their families. Food would taste better, be better for you and involve a lot more work. People wouldn't go hungry. Agricultural subsidies wouldn't exist. Organic permaculture would be standard, and Union Carbide wouldn't make pesticides anymore. We wouldn't have a giant dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico because of chemical runoff from fields. Pregnant women would be able to drink the water in Wallula, Washington. People wouldn't live in Phoenix, at least not in the numbers they do now. We wouldn't overpump our goundwater to grow wheat and alfalfa. Everyone would eat meat, and everyone would eat less.
I have no idea how to get there. But that's where I'm headed, with as many crazy life-loving, tree-hugging, anti-industrial capitalist people as I can drag along with me.
No comments:
Post a Comment