College portioning salad?! REALLY?

Well I'm sick, and therefor a cranky bee-otch.

I finally feel up to eating something so I make my way down five flighs of stairs to the dining hall, hand over my meal card and make my way to the salad bar (as per usual)...

Lo and behold, what do I find?

The salad bar, a place usually stocked with a 'build your own' salad motif, chalk full of veggies, vegetarian friendly protein and healthy fats (slivered raw almonds, sunflower seeds, etc) to be replaced by rows upon rows of McDonalds like garden salad.

No veggie-friendly protein, no healthy fats. Heck, the soy sauce I liked tosprinkle on my daily salad was gone to... in an effort of 'portion control'

Yet the rest of the messhall was still in a 'take as much as you want to shove into your face' mode.

Shouldn't we be portioning out those french fries? Or the cookies, muffins and all the stuff that SHOULD be a little more portion controlled?
I'm a creeper and I take a little looksee around to see what others are munching on... and it's gross to see someone with a full plate of mac and cheese, a burger AND fries.

Ugh.

Did anyone say it was for portion control??  Could it be just a temporary thing?

I would talk to the head of food service, if I were you.

My guess is it's less about portion control and more about saving money.  At the end of the day they have to throw out everything on the salad bar that wasn't eaten.  They probably feel like they're throwing away a LOT of food and are trying to solve that by putting out pre-packaged stuff.

^ This.  However, I can't imagine they are saving too much if they are having to pay for all that wasteful packaging.

Original Post by adolphs:

^ This.  However, I can't imagine they are saving too much if they are having to pay for all that wasteful packaging.

 Hey adolphs we agree on something.

They're probably paying less in the short term and more in the long term, but since college dorms are budgeted yearly and they pay for their food as it's delivered or whatever this "works best" for them.

Unfortunately it doesn't work best for everyone eating there I'm sure.

I know I gained 25 pounds in two years living in the dorms.  So much bad food and very little good food.  Even the "healthy stuff" was cooked in an unhealthy manner.  The only truly healthy stuff was the raw stuff on the salad bar.  And yo ucan't live on salads.

I thought it might be the cost thing... but so many people there actually eat the salad. Sure a lot also eat the crap, but why only portion out one thing? (And remove the other options from it)

No you can't live on salads, but they're one of the only things in that place that tastes somewhat decent. Everything else is overcooked, unappealing (and swimming in oils) or contains some meat/cheese. The vegetarian dishes are the some of the saltiest things I've tasted.

I just wish we had more of an option. If this mealplan wasn't mandatory I would eat up in my dorm room and eat as decently as one can with a toaster oven and microwave.

Ugh, that SUCKS!

I'd complain. =(

Make-your-own salad bars are the best, and, let's face it, nine times out of ten premade type salads just suck. 

Okay, so I didn't offer any great solution. But I feel for ya.

Write a letter of complaint to the head of the kitchen.  If there is still no results, write a letter to the editor of your school newspaper.

If the mealplan is mandatory then they should be held to a higher standard of nutrition and you can quote that in your letter lol.