Investigation

Eating at NSA

By: Frédérick Hallé

Kids here at NSA complain a lot about food no matter what’s on the menu.  I decided to make a research and talk to Steve Preston as well as the cooks to know more about the organization of the school on food and maybe make students realize that it won’t be everyday of their life that they are going to eat mom’s food.

One of the great meal serve in a typical cafeteria.

I am writing this because I am tired of hearing students complaining. I agree that it’s not like my mom’s food but we are eating better foods then typical cafeteria ones, where they serve you scoop of juicy potatoes with beans and some kind of meet with sauce that you almost throw up just by looking at it.

Giving some numbers and explain how things are budgeted, I hope that the people at NSA will realized how hard it is to manage all of that and make everyone happy.

NSA spends 100 thousand dollars on food for a year and that includes summer programs.

Money obviously comes from student’s tuition but there is not a specific amount from every student. The money comes from different group budget. By example, when there’s a recruit coming in to visit and eat at school, the money will come from the development budget. If there is a special event like alumni dinner, the money comes from the development department, which is usually made of donation. There is also the boy’s hockey team budget, girl’s hockey and ski teams. Usually a certain department that need something will transfer money to the school so as it doesn’t come from the 100 thousand.

The budget is divided this way: $8 for breakfast, $12 for lunch and $20 for dinner for a student per day. This way the school makes approximately 1500 meals per months and that does not include weekends. Out of this, an average of 75 meals are completely wasted because students get help from the garbage cans or sometimes there is too much left overs.

Budgeting 1500 meals is not as easy as it looks like.

The school is part of the New York states child program that required including 5 food groups for every meal. If it’s done well, the States give a little bit of money to the school.

Some kids are allergic to lactate; peanut butter, wheat and some others are vegetarians, which complicates the cook’s tasks.

Also the budget does not allowed the school to by certain kind of food every week like steak or fish because it is too expensive. The school does it when they can have a little discount but other than that it is hard to by something else than chicken.

Regardless that there is chicken almost every night, it is not always the same sauce or same kind of chicken and it usually doesn’t have the same sides. Salad is also always available.

When students are really unsatisfied, knowing that some don’t spend any money and some others can spend, as much as $15, the average per week of money spends on food somewhere in town is $5.

The cooks plan the meals every two weeks to make two weekly meals schedule. They try to varied it a little bit but with all the restriction it’s is hard and stressful to satisfy everyone. Image how frustrating it can get when 80 people walk by you saying just two little words on how the meal wasn’t good.

An option for students to make the food better is to contribute. By example, at this time of the year, students can volunteer in town to help making maple syrup. If a decent amount of student help, the school could get a good prize for real maple syrup for next year because as of now the one at school is way cheaper but not really healthy.