Not every Tufts student asks the question, "Where did this come from?" when they take a bite of food. If they did, it's entirely possible that another hot dog would never be eaten on the Hill.
However, some Tufts students do ask themselves that question, and Tufts University Dining Services (TUDS) is working to make the answer, "New England."
Dining Services nutritionist Julie Lampie explained that a local food effort is replacing the organic food effort across campuses nationwide. Though TUDS started looking into organic food over a decade ago, Lampie said that high costs stunted the program.
Still, the dining halls offer almost two dozen organic items, including much of the food offered at the vegetarian stations. Lampie cited all beans and legumes, such as kidney beans, pinto beans and edamame beans, as well as most whole grains, such as quinoa, barley bulgur wheat and brown rice as being organic. The whole wheat pasta, tofu, soy milk, natural peanut butter and six different granolas are also organic.
Though serving organic meat on a regular basis would be prohibitively expensive, Lampie explained that for "special occasions," TUDS buys meat from Northeast Family Farms.
"It is a meat that is raised in the northeast on small family farms, then slaughtered in small slaughter houses humanely," Lampie said. She estimated that Dining Services buys Northeast Family Farms meat four times per year.
These efforts have mostly been put on hold in favor of local food, which is more practical and also, Lampie said, more nutritional.
"There's no definitive advantage nutritionally from organic," Lampie said, explaining that very few studies have been done to look at the health benefits of organic food. "But we all know that organic has fewer pesticides than traditional products."
In contrast, Lampie said that local food has many nutritional benefits. "It's been freshly picked, so the number of nutrients that are retained is greater than something that is picked, transported across the country on trucks, and that might be consumed a week after it's been picked in the field," Lampie said.
Dining Services offers local food through its FEAST (Food Education and Action for Sustainability at Tufts) program, formerly known as TFAP (Tufts Food Awareness Project).
Right now, locally grown apples are available in the dining halls.
"We started purchasing local apples probably seven years ago," Lampie said. "We try to source local produce when available. It's usually available until mid-October when the first frost comes."
This year, the local apples will hopefully be available throughout the entire year. "They have cold storage for apples, so in the past, you could buy apples maybe through November," Lampie said. "We're hoping to get them for the whole school year."
However, the switch to local food is not without its difficulties.
"This year we teamed with a local farmer, Lanni Orchards, where in the past, we would go through our distributor," Lampie said. The switch had both positive and negative aspects.
"We both benefited by going direct," Lampie said, explaining that cutting out a third party results in a higher benefit for the farmer and a lower cost for Tufts.
However, the switch also resulted in less locally grown produce. "This year, the farmer was not as capable of providing our needs, which shorted us without our knowledge," Lampie said. "So we cut back on buying certain things that are local.
"Last year, we did a better job because we went through this distributor," Lampie said. Normally, Dining Services can get more than just apples. Lampie cited squash, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini as locally grown food on the market place that TUDS would like to have in the dining halls.
These foods, however, pose a new difficulty: except for apples, most local foods are not available throughout the majority of the school year. "Since school starts in September and the frost comes in early October, we have maybe six [or] seven weeks that you're going to be able to source any [local food]," Lampie said.
Still, Dining Services is determined: "We still have to work out some of the kinks on the local level, but we are definitely committed to buying as much local [food] as we can.," Lampie said.
To help with that commitment, Dining Services has paired with Tufts Environmental Consciousness Outreach (ECO). Junior and ECO member Alex Bedig explained that ECO is committed to raising awareness for locally grown food.
"I see the current means of food production in our country as being inefficient when it comes to our use of scarce and environmentally damaging resources, and not necessarily beneficial to the consumer," Bedig said.
"I believe that encouraging consumption of locally grown products would not only cut out vast wastes as far as the energy costs of shipping fruit across the world, but it would also reconnect people with the foods they are putting in their bodies."
One method ECO and Dining Services are planning to raise awareness is Climate Fest, a festival on Oct. 11 that will celebrate many of the Dining Services food initiatives.
Besides just local food, ClimateFest will also work to raise awareness to a third campaign: sustainable food.
The sustainable food movement, primarily focused on fish, began last year and is continuing to grow. "We're moving towards trying to offer fish that's only considered sustainable or on the green list," Lampie said, citing a record provided by multiple organizations that lists the different sustainable fish.
One of the green lists Dining Services consults is that of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. According to the list, Alaskan salmon, halibut, catfish, and abalone are sustainable, while most sharks, Chilean sea bass, and imported shrimp are not.
"Every Wednesday night in Carmichael and every Thursday night in Dewick, we feature sustainable fresh fish of the week," Lampie said.
Lampie explained that currently, not all the fish in the dining hall is considered sustainable. "We would like to move away from Atlantic cod," Lampie said. "Pacific cod is on the green list, which is more plentiful and the farming methods are more environmentally positive."
"We're not completely there, but we'd like to move in that direction," Lampie said.
Bedig said that ECO hopes Tufts will soon only serve sustainable fish, though he admitted that "the market will always be a huge factor."
Junior and ECO member Carrie Jones thinks that despite fluctuating markets and program difficulties, Tufts will be able to complete its switch to local, sustainable, and fair trade products.
"I think supporting local communities, eating food that isn't grown with obscene amounts of chemicals and pesticides, paying workers fairly for all they provide for us, and harvesting food in a sustainable way that will ensure its existence in the future are all reachable goals for the Tufts community," Jones said.
"Implementing them in the dining halls is the first step to reaching the minds of the student body."
