“When you reap the harvest of your college campus, do not reap to the very edges of your dining hall…” – Studenticus 19:9

Dorm food is not just for students anymore.  The Occidental College chapter of Circle K, a national collegiate community service organization, has partnered with Occidental’s campus dining facilities to deliver quality, un-served food to Midnight Mission, a major provider of emergency food to the needy living on Skid Row.  Adriana Fukuzato, president of the Circle K chapter, says that, “Circle K is dedicated to service and that means being leaders in the community. This is not only a service to Occidental but to Midnight Mission as well…. we are more than happy to donate the food as well as our time to such a wonderful organization.”

Circle K’s efforts are vital at a time when the ranks of the hungry and food insecure are burgeoning.  The additional need is straining emergency food providers like Midnight Mission.  The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, the biggest player in Los Angeles’ charitable food distribution network, recently reported that demand at the food pantries they serve has increased by 34% since 2008.  More than ever, we need to make efficient use of our food to feed the hungry in our community.

Tragically, Americans waste a tremendous amount of food. According to a recent USDA study[1], about 1400 calories of food is wasted per person per day, amounting to over 150 trillion calories per year!

This figure takes into account food waste that occurs at every level, from the edible but blemished fruit and vegetables farmers can’t sell to the unsold baked goods your local coffee shops throws away every day.  If we were able to glean this food waste, there would be 3000 calories of food available to feed each of the 49.1 million food insecure Americans- 1000 calories more than their suggested caloric intake.  Of course, not all of this food waste is realistically recoverable, but these figures do suggest that gleaning presents a real opportunity to feed the hungry and improve food security.

Food waste is not just a humanitarian issue – it’s also an environmental catastrophe.  It takes one quarter of our total freshwater consumption and more than 300 million barrels of oil per year to produce the food we waste.  Furthermore, 98% of the food ends up in landfills and decomposes into methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that has 25 times the impact on atmospheric temperatures when compared to a similar amount of carbon dioxide.

I believe that an effective food recovery program would have a huge positive impact on our community, and so do the students I’ve been working with at UCLA, USC, and the Claremont Colleges.  They hope to follow Occidental Circle K’s lead and convince their campus dining facilities to donate their un-served food to food aid providers.  It’s important for our civic institutions, like our city’s prestigious universities, to set an example for the rest of the community.

Los Angeles- our students are ready to be the Boaz to our city’s Ruths.  Dorm food is every bit as gleanable as a field of grain, and just as important to feeding the hungry in our city.

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[1] USDA.Mark Nord, M. Andrews, S. Carlson. Household Food Security in the United States, 2008.

Tags: College, Dorm, Food, Harvest

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 11:23 am and is filed under Community Service, Everyday Heroes, Facing Hunger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.