If you’ve been checking in with Haverford's The Clerk articles recently, you might have seen a few pop up related to our Dining Center and how we approach food. Katie Rowlett ’16 delved into the difficult topic of what the definition of “local” food is (spoiler alert: There isn’t one), and Adriana Cvitkovic ’16 explored our system of labeling foods in general and how problems arise in a food system where we have lost our connection with the farmers and distributing process. These articles, which aim to spread awareness about food systems and how they impact us on a day-to-day basis, are part of the larger Environmental Studies Senior Capstone class that has focused broadly on trying to close the food systems on campus and promote sustainable, ethical, and just food sources.

We’ve divided this over-arching topic into four different groups, each with a different objective:

• Providing a proposal for how Haverford could do all of our own composting on campus.
• Researching theories of food justice and writing a series of articles in the Clerk to share our insight on problems with food system – and there will be one more published before the end of the semester!
• Designing food bios for commonly used food products to promote education in the Dining Center.
• Researching alternatives for what we have deemed to be particularly problematic foods, like milk and meat, in Haverford College’s Dining Center.

Nora Weathers ’16 and I fall into this last category: food alternatives, which has basically involved sitting in front of a computer screen for hours on end, trying to track down different products and companies and comparing both their prices and philosophies. To break it down, here are a few of the main things that we focused in on when looking at alternatives:

1. Sustainability. One of the first things that we decided as our capstone class was that we wanted to use the terminology of “sustainable” over that of local. While local has been getting a lot of attention in farmer’s markets, healthy eating blogs, and advertisement, one key problem with this work is that, like I mentioned before, there is no strict definition. There aren’t any guidelines of how many miles food can travel and still be considered local and there also aren’t stipulations as to the conditions, regulations, and practices that a farm would have to meet in order to earn this title. Therefore, we’re instead interested in how sustainable certain farms and crops are. For example, in studying almond milk, one of the big sustainability concern that came up is that 82% of the world’s almonds are grown in California, which are huge water guzzlers in their current drought. Seriously, each almond takes 1.1 gallons of water to produce, which ultimately means that 1.1 trillion gallons of water are being used toward this crop in California, which is literally nuts.
2. Nutrition. While it’s great that many alternative milk and meat products are popping up all over the place, we want to make sure that any recommendation we make takes into consideration the nutritional values of these animal products and that the alternatives we suggest would still meet these needs. And this is actually a lot harder than it sounds. A lot of non-dairy milks naturally lack calcium and protein, which is a major reason why people drink milk in the first place. In some ways, these products can be fortified with vitamins and supplements so that they meet the same nutritional values of milk, but this is completely dependent on specific brands and so we’ve done a lot of research to compare how the different milks are processed and what is (and isn’t) added to them.
3. Feasibility: While some of the products we’ve been looking at are super cool, the chance that we would be able to get enough to support our dining hall and a student body of 1,194 students isn’t always feasible. For example, we’ve recently been looking into sheep milk as an alternative to cow’s milk. Why? Well sheep milk is naturally homogenized (so the product is less processed), sheep produce 30 liters of methane daily (as opposed to the 200 liters that dairy cows can produce), and it’s higher in protein, carbs, fat, vitamin C & B12, folate, calcium, and magnesium than cow’s milk. Sounds great, right? Well unfortunately, sheep’s milk just hasn’t caught on in the United States yet, and so there currently is no way for us to purchase milk in state.
4. Along with feasibility, we’re also concerned with Cost:Benefits analysis. We do want to provide alternatives in our Dining Hall, but we also understand that everything comes with a price tag. In addition to comparing the general prices of different alternatives – let’s say coconut vs. hemp milk – we’ll also be comparing specific companies to see if certain brands are more cost effective than others.

One important thing to recognize is that all of our research is strictly recommendations. Nothing will actually be implemented without the support of the student body and the administration on campus.

But, speaking of student body support, part of our project was to send out a survey to test the waters about student’s current eating habits and if they would be willing to try out alternative food sources. We were so overwhelmed by the number of responses we received – we’ve gotten over 30% of the student body to take it! And while the survey will be open for a few more weeks, we wanted to share some of our initial findings (And, if you’re a Haverford or Bryn Mawr student you can click here to take it!).

One of our initial concerns in designing this survey was that we wanted to make sure that any recommendations we made reflected the entirety of the student body. For example, because getting sufficient protein is a huge factor for athletes, we wanted to ensure that we were receiving a distribution of responses from non-athletes, club or intramural athletes, and varsity athletes. And, so far, we have succeeded.

And while students were more than happy to check off boxes and fill out multiple choices about their eating habits, we also received many insightful comments as well. Students were asked if they would like to see other kinds of milks in the dining center, and we had people suggest everything from coconut milk to goat milk to whole milk, and some people just wanting higher quality milk in general.

We also asked students where their milk would come from in an ideal world, and while “local” and “sustainable” were common buzzwords, some notable responses included:

• Not by an “evil capitalist giant conglomerate!”
• “In a way that does not perpetuate social inequalities”
• “Happy cows”

We concluded our survey by asking students if they would be willing to eat/drink less meat/milk throughout the day so that we could potentially buy better quality products from ethically and sustainability raised animals. Below are a few of our results:

For Nora and myself, this may have been the most exciting aspect of the survey thus far, as it indicates that anywhere between 80-85% of the student body was somewhere between neutral and totally willing to change their eating habits to support sustainable, ethical, and just foods.

As the this semester wraps up and we finalize our aspect of the project, we’ll be making all of the data collected from the survey readily available and be publishing booklets that explore each of the milk alternatives we researched. If you’re interested in learning more about our project or the Environmental Capstone, please be in touch!