The Underground Charge

Alright, so this post is a little different than the others… this brings us to a more personal level, something that might get more intimate than people want to read about. This is about how the Sodexho Food Services is slowly going to poison me and the rest of the student body to death.

The cafeteria has never been deemed “good” in the time I have been here. One thing that I have to commend is that we no longer smell like the Rot (originally coined from the cafeteria’s previous owner, Mariott). I remember my freshman year having to change my clothes after I ate because they stank of fried food and lots of oil. Since then, the cafeteria has installed better ventilation systems, especially over the stir fry station, so the smell has no longer been a major issue.

But this year brought a katrillion first years, and due to the mass quantity that is forced to be served, the food itself has lost any sense of edible lustre. The vegetables are drowned in water and whatever else is floating in the water. The pasta is usually undercooked, the scrambled eggs slop into the basin that we scoop out of like snot, and the slices of bread break in half because they’re usually stale. The soup is usually unidentifiable, and let’s not talk about the salad…

The general consensus is that if there’s nothing to eat, students resort to pizza… and I see pizza all around me every lunch and dinner. Oh, and the fries. Fries are always a healthy alternative to the sandwich meat that’s been sitting out on its own, uncovered, for at least six hours.

Know what else is great? How at least once a week, the cafeteria runs out of milk. First it’s the skim milk (so forget trying to be healthy), then it’s the whole milk, then it’s the chocolate milk. How hard is it to keep inventory? I won’t even get started with the coffee. We all know what I think of that.

So, why don’t I just toughen up and eat the freaking stuff? Well, I do try to eat healthy. I’ll eat the vegetables that weren’t really cooked, I’ll eat the chicken that always has a slight pink tint to it because I need my protein, screw getting some life-threatening disease! It’s not like I’m starving. The reason I complain is that this stuff is making me sick. Not like, “Oh, when I think about it, it makes me sick.” NO. It makes me sit on the toilet and release things that are unnatural. It makes my stomach churn all day, every day… as if I could puke at any moment 24/7. And this has been a constant this year. Other years, my body just went through cycles every couple weeks or so where it had to try and detox, and then would be able to handle the food again. That is not the case this year.

So, bottom line, this food sucks. When I cook for myself, or I’m back home for the summer, I feel fine. I know it’s not because of stress or anything because I can feel the food hit into my stomach like a rock after every meal, and it’s gross. I’m never actually satisfied from the food… my body still craves to be fed something healthy for once.

Alright, so that’s all I have to say. I know I’m not the only one who’s literally getting sick from this food. I think that people need to consistenly write on the comment cards that this is not good. My family has been concerned because when I went home for the long weekend, I raved about how the food at home wasn’t giving me diarrhea. I mean, seriously, something’s wrong with that.

You know you go to a small campus in a small town when:

• Students automatically get blamed for vandalisim
• Old women give you the death stare when you ask to help them across the street
• The local grocery store stops you every time you buy more than 24 cans of beer
• Your local police station points directly at the college dorms