Students want to bring more ‘real food’ to university

Having grown up surrounded by tall trees, running rivers and verdant vegetation in her rural New England home, Michelle Kim was astounded when she moved to Maryland at 16 to find a less idyllic — and not always green — state.

"Environmentalism is in my blood; it was in my upbringing," said Kim, a junior environmental science and policy major and the vice chairwoman of sustainability for the Student Government Association. "When I moved to Maryland, it became obvious that everyone wasn't this way."

But that doesn't mean she's given up quite yet. Kim and fellow environmental activist Jesse Yurow, who is also the SGA's agriculture legislator, are trying to reinvent the way college students eat.

The pair went to a training session sponsored by the Real Food Challenge — a campaign started at the 2007 Food and Society Conference in Michigan — at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill last weekend to learn about how to incorporate more "real food" into universities.

"Real Food Challenge is basically an initiative to divert funds used by college campuses to supply local and sustainable food — real food," Kim said. "They have criteria that the food needs to meet to be counted as real: It must be fair, ecologically sound, local and community-based and humane."

The training session taught about 20 students from East Coast universities how to expand the "real food" movement to change the way universities serve and purchase food.

With assistance from the Rural Advancement Foundation International staff — a private nonprofit that promotes environmentally sound farming — Yurow and Kim learned "about the [U.S. Department of Agriculture] organic standards in an intimate environment and figur[ed] out how to hammer out issues our schools are facing," Yurow said.

Yurow, a senior environmental science and technology major, explained the "real food" system like a traffic light: If the food meets none of the four criteria, it's red; if it meets one, it's yellow; if it meets two or more, it's green.

"Say the food is local, that's cool," Yurow said. "But if the chickens are pumped with hormones and antibiotics and raised in cages, then it's still red."

Kim and Yurow are working to achieve the Real Food Challenge's goal of selling 20 percent "real food" in the university's dining halls by the year 2020. Kim guessed the university is at about 3 percent now.

On Oct. 14, 2009, the university was awarded the title of America's Greenest Campus, bringing in $5,000 for sustainability programs. The title was created through a joint effort from Climate Culture, a clean energy social-networking site, and Smart Power, a nonprofit, clean energy marketing company.

But Kim said there's work to be done to really deserve that title.

"It's good to see how many students know how large their carbon footprint is," Kim said. "We won that title, but we have a lot to do to live up to it. Real food is something we can do to legitimize that."

Dining Services Assistant Director Bart Hipple said that while his department is trying to do its part with measures such as serving cage-free eggs and hormone-free dairy, the 20 percent goal is farther off than perhaps Kim and Yurow would like. Because Dining Services is revenue-neutral — meaning it may only spend as much money as it takes in — having more "real food" could be a challenge.

"Price is not necessarily the only driver, but we have to have enough of a good quality and a price that's within the range in order to make a change," Hipple said. "We have a bias toward local and real foods, but we also are serving 22,000 meals a day."

Kim and Yurow said they would like to see more events such as the farmers' market that came to the campus last spring. Hipple agreed.

"Would we be happy to have more farmers' markets on campus? Absolutely. Will we do our part in helping them to come on campus? Yeah. Are we willing to assume the full burden of the financial responsibility for those farmers' markets? We can't do that," he said.

"We will absolutely support this real food effort, and we will do what makes sense," Hipple added. "Not always what's cheapest, but what makes sense."

While Kim said she understands the realistic limits, she'd like to see how far an initiative such as the Real Food Challenge can go.

"We want to see how far we can push the envelope at the university," she said. "We want to see how many steps we can take. Even if it's only ‘real food' once a week, we would consider that a great success."

egan@umdbk.com"real food" in the university's dining halls by the year 2020. Kim guessed the university is at about 3 percent now.

On Oct. 14, 2009, the university was awarded the title of America's Greenest Campus, bringing in $5,000 for sustainability programs. The title was created through a joint effort from Climate Culture, a clean energy social-networking site, and Smart Power, a nonprofit, clean energy marketing company.

But Kim said there's work to be done to really deserve that title.

"It's good to see how many students know how large their carbon footprint is," Kim said. "We won that title, but we have a lot to do to live up to it. Real food is something we can do to legitimize that."

Dining Services Assistant Director Bart Hipple said that while his department is trying to do its part with measures such as serving cage-free eggs and hormone-free dairy, the 20 percent goal is farther off than perhaps Kim and Yurow would like.

Because Dining Services is revenue-neutral — meaning it may only spend as much money as it takes in — having more "real food" could be a challenge, unless students are charged more in fees or the department makes cuts in other places.