One club on campus is attempting to put locally-grown food in Ohio University dining halls.
Ohio University’s West State Street Research Center is a garden run by Arthur Trese. It is a garden for students in environmental studies classes to learn about plants and ecology of plants hands-on. Trese and the Food Matters club at Ohio University are trying to get OU's dining halls to use the locally grown food to integrate more vegetables that are fresh and grown by fellow peers.
I think this is really important because food at the dining halls is yes, high in variety, but poor in healthy options. As a former dining hall employee, I know what happens behind the scenes. Most food is prepackaged and processed and bought for quantity and not quality.
I think using the vegetables grown on campus is a very important step toward having fresh, local and healthy food in the dining halls. This will also help keep the gardens running and giving students a purpose to growing vegetables for their classes or research projects, and the food doesn't have to go to waste because it will be used at high capacity. The Food Matters President says they are growing enough food to sustain the dining halls, so that won't be a problem.
I think this will be an overall good choice because it will help dining halls become supportive of local food, students that want to grow food and students that eat at the dining halls.
Sophia Vancouver is a resident of Athens County.
