Preparing a meal in college

When you think about preparing a meal, you think cutting potatoes, onions, and other vegetables. However, while living on campus at a college that is clearly not the case. Most students living on campus do not have access to kitchens or even grocery stores for that matter. If I feel like going to the grocery store, I have to plan a bus trip. The trip typically lasts at least an hour an a half, because not only do you have to wait for a bus to come and get you but you also have to shop fast enough to catch the next bus. Otherwise, you might find yourself waiting another half hour for another bus to come and get you and bring you back to campus. Another problem with preparing a meal for yourself in college is storing the food after it is purchased. The refrigerators provided for students are not big enough to store large quantities of food. So cooking for yourself, while living in a dormitory, is just not practical on a regular basis.
The only alternative is to eat in campus dining halls. The UW-Madison campus dining halls are starting a program where they order organic foods from local farmers. To eat in the dining hall all that is involved on my part of preparing the meal is to grab a tray tell the person working that I would like the organic squash and the pork that was raised within the surrounding Madison area. Then I go to the checkout line and pay for it with my student card. For cleanup all I have to do is go and put my tray in the tray return zone. It’s fast, easy, and no work is involved in actually going to the store or preparing the food itself. I would agree with Pollan’s statement, “a flood of damaging innovations…such as low-fat processed food.” For the fact that, several people look for low-fat on the packages of the food they want before purchasing it. It also affected me not because I was looking for low-fat food, but because most of the food served in the dining hall is processed. The statement has to be true because everywhere you go you see either low-fat or processed foods. Not even the dining hall is safe anymore.