In the Food Revolution, More Students Opt to Cook Their Own

Rachel Ray, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and the Food Channel have had their effect on the eating habits of college students, helping inspire a push for local and organic food at colleges across the country. An article from the Associated Press notes that trend—and adds that more students are interested in cooking for themselves.

Student tastes have become more diverse, more sophisticated, and more international, the article says, if Sodexo’s list of top campus foods for 2009 is any indication: It includes Vietnamese pho, mini-samosas, goat-cheese salad, and chicken mole. (A potential downside, from the local-food perspective: The more diverse the food options a college offers, the tougher it is to get a large proportion of the ingredients locally.)

Beyond the dining-hall doors, more residence halls feature kitchens, and some students invite chefs to teach cooking classes or gather together to prepare meals together. At Pitzer College, students even hold weekly “garden parties” in which they cook meals based on the campus garden’s harvest.

“Clearly, there has been a great rejection of the [traditional] campus meal plan, both because of the inflexibility of it and because you have so many different kinds of tastes now,” Nach Waxman, the owner a Manhattan cookbook store, tells the AP. “And the dorms have changed: They have kitchens and food prep rooms. When I was in college, there was no such thing.”