C’est Tray Ban!

Maybe you remember standing in line at the high school or college cafeteria, particularly with one of those prepaid, all-you-can-eat, meal plans. Hey, you paid for it so… bring it on, a little (but not destined to stay so little) voice might cry. Heaps of pasta or pancakes, sausage and scrambled eggs, and large lumps of palpitating cake… thump, thwack, grab! Do you remember considering carrying a heavy “punched out,” prison issue metal tray laden with excess food a form of collegiate exercise? One, two, three, four… lift!

Remember the “freshman ten” or “fifteen” or “twenty-five”? For some, that was a transition period that remained, you should pardon the expression, swell for life. Many blamed that late-night pizza delivery dude with pepperoni poison dripping with gooey, oil-oozing cheese. Yum, even better the next day after being left out overnight! Sitting around, late at night, chewing the fat? Comfort food… great for exam period… and pre-exam period… and to celebrate after exam period.

And who could resist, on a snowy campus, using a metal tray purloined from the cafeteria as a sled…. Weeeeeeeeee! I’m getting exercise! Weeeeeee! That means I can load the one I will use at the cafeteria with even more… lift, one, two, three… So campus administrators, wanting to save money, avoid waste and help their chubby-and-getting-chubbier students avoid waist! But, Ms. College President, the ones stamped with the college seal make such great souvenirs?! What if the carrying surface from the food line simply were smaller and held less food? Hmmm… could that diabolical plan hold water?

All over the country, schools & universities are shedding those seemingly efficient, one-tray-as-a-plate-holds-all, and replacing them with… tum-tee-dum… with… er… plates. Smaller, right? And oddly, students are shedding pounds and reducing waste/waist. The February 17^th Washington Post writes: “Without a tray, students have to be pickier during the first sweep of the cafeteria line and make trips back for more. It results in as much as 25 to 30 percent less wasted food, according to a 2008 study of 25 campuses by food services provider Aramark.” Yeah, and a few kids consider the extra walking back and forth to get seconds and thirds to be a new form of exercise!

Young men and women faced with losing their favorite ftv (food transport vehicle) for a small plate and a single cup are often upset… and even protests can emerge. Not exactly like a Bahrain bash or a Cairo cabal, but reflecting not being consulted. “At Virginia Tech, administrators recruited the student government and campus environmentalists to help [sell the plan]. It started as an Earth Week experiment during the 2008 spring semester, when student volunteers weighed the amount of food waste in dining halls with and without trays. Without trays, students wasted 38 percent less food. By summer, the trays were gone in the two main dining halls on campus, D2 and Shultz.” The Post. Perhaps, loyal readers, you are finding all this much too difficult to swallow! Chances of the world’s staying the same are… er… slim… to none!

I’m Peter Dekom, and with commodities prices destined to soar, perhaps this really is one of my economic blogs after all!