So Fresh and So Green, Green

Earlier this year, Drew Gilpin Faust was installed as Harvard University’s 28th president with much pomp and circumstance. Despite the tradition of this ceremony, it contained hallmarks of modernity, including a “local and sustainable dinner” prepared by Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) and served in dining halls across campus. This non-traditional meal represents the end-goal of Harvard’s attempts to prioritize sustainable eating. However, like President Faust’s installation ceremony, these attempts to progress toward sustainability remain largely symbolic. For widespread change to occur on campus, students need to voice strong desire for local, seasonal, and organic produce.

The push for sustainable dishes is much more than a health foodie’s cause or a produce connoisseur’s obsession, and the shift towards local, seasonal, and organic college dining is becoming increasingly common. But why should we, busy Harvard students, care about the origin of a chickpea or the homeland of a grapefruit?

Although few realize it, food transportation contributes to global climate change. It is simply a matter of common sense: the greater the distance a zucchini has to travel before it hits the dinner table, the longer it takes for trucks to transport it there. As those 18-wheelers burn diesel, they release copious amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Therefore, the basic principle of choosing local, seasonal produce to avoid this pollution is simple. Diners can prevent unnecessary fossil fuel consumption by purchasing fruits and veggies that grow nearby at the appropriate time of year. When faced with exotic cravings for mangoes and plums in autumn, Harvard students could “go green” by eating Massachusetts-grown strawberries or pears.

Although choosing local strawberries or pears at college is not quite as simple as it is at home, where you can buy food at your local grocery store, students still have the power to affect gastronomic change at Harvard. HUDS chooses our breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for us, trying to satisfy a wide diversity of tastes on campus. This does not mean, though, that we should sit complacently as the dining hall staff fills our trays with food from California or Mexico. HUDS values the desires of the student body as a whole, inviting undergraduates to “offer comments and suggestions” through online response cards entitled “Let Us Know What You Think.” In addition, HUDS conducts bi-annual surveys to assess dining hall satisfaction. On the most recent questionnaire, one section gauged whether students consider “locally sourced food” a “top priority.” If an overwhelming number of students respond to questions like this affirmatively, change can, and will, occur.

Similarly, students can encourage HUDS to buy organic produce as often as possible by eating the organic fruits and veggies that dining halls already offer. Organic farmers avoid contaminating rain and groundwater by growing crops without the use of pesticides. Because of this, food can appear to be visually unappealing even though it is safer for the planet. But students should not feel turned off by a blemished tomato or strangely shaped apple; though they may be less attractive, organic fruits and vegetables often taste fresher than their chemically treated counterparts. Every time one student chooses a slightly smaller—and sweeter—organic apple over a conventional one, we encourage HUDS to continue offering sustainable options.

While Harvard students have the power to actively engage in this effort for sustainable dining, our Yale contemporaries have beaten us to the punch. Through Yale University’s Sustainable Food Project (SFP), Elis enjoy four fully sustainable meals each week, and a sustainable entrée and side at every lunch and dinner. Organic milk, coffee, yogurt, tea, bananas, granola, and tomato sauce are available at every meal. SFP also manages a model college farm, fertilized by leaves that litter the campus in autumn.

Indeed, Yale has attempted to pass along their forward-thinking food habits to other college campuses. In November, SFP partnered with The Food Project in Boston and the Brown Sustainable Food Initiative to host a Real Food Summit. The summit included 150 students from over 40 schools across the Northeast. Harvard sent three student delegates, each representing different environmental and food interest groups on campus, and two HUDS representatives.

Harvard’s representatives had much to answer for when they encountered other locally-minded students at the summit. Summit literature classified Harvard as an institution with a “sustainable dining hall program” including “local, organic, seasonal purchasing and fair trade.” Based on such a description, it may seem like Harvard already enjoys fully sustainable dining.

However, according to the Food Literacy Project, a division of HUDS devoted to promoting food awareness and understanding, “You’ll already find local apples, winter squashes, mushrooms, lettuce and other produce [at Harvard], but we’re working towards sourcing an even greater percentage of our fresh produce from New England farms.” Such phrasing demonstrates Harvard’s current situation: HUDS only incorporates some elements of sustainability into its dining halls—a local squash here and an organic apple there. According to Francesca T. Gilberti ’10, a Crimson magazine editor and leader of Harvard Slow Food—a local chapter of an international organization that promotes local, sustainable food—“In order for HUDS and the Food Literacy Project to initiate widespread change, they need to know that sustainable dining matters to the students.”

With HUDS’ willingness to incorporate Massachusetts’ best fruits and vegetables and with student efforts to promote local dining, Harvard has the potential to create a fully sustainable dining program. As the University is largely on our side, we cannot use the barriers of bureaucracy as an excuse for inaction, like many have before us. For the sake of our planet, students must pay attention to the supermarket produce they scarf down. It is time to think globally, and demand that we eat locally.

Molly M. Strauss ’11, a Crimson editorial editor, is a Yard Representative for the Resource Efficiency Program and lives in Straus Hall.