About 15 minutes before most students returned to Philadelphia, they were instructed to return their tray tables to the full upright and locked position. Better advice would have been to carry them off the plane: Trays on Penn's campus have begun to make themselves scarce.
Blink, and you may have missed the warning. Toward the end of last year, Dining Services conducted a brief survey in Hill Dining Hall. They first measured the amount of food waste generated by diners on a handful of Mondays. Over the next few Mondays, they took away the trays. Though students were still free to return for more food as often as they liked, in the end they took less.
Other schools, including the University of Florida, New York University and University of North Carolina, have already eliminated trays altogether. In some trials, food waste dropped as much as 50 percent.
Such reports were so encouraging that Dining Services is adopting the program at Penn. According to Laurie Cousart, director of Business Services, the final program will look slightly different than the trial run. Instead of eliminating trays, they will simply become more difficult to find.
Now, students will have to trek to far-flung corners of the cafeteria if they want to weigh themselves down with multiple servings at a time. But instead of occurring once a week, the program will be instituted on a permanent basis.
Dining staff members have posted signs touting the program's environmental benefits. Fewer trays translates to less food waste and also conserves energy, water and detergent. Though nearly four out of five students nationwide surveyed by Aramark this past Spring indicated support for the move, the signs anticipate student consternation at the denial of their right to tray.
On its face, any attempt to control how students eat is offensive. Students living away from home are responsible enough to make their own decisions at mealtime. And let's face it: Anything that forces students to move more than absolutely necessary is bound to attract at least a modicum of ire.
But such protests rest on the assumption that people are capable of making smart decisions about what they eat. They're not. In fact, most people can't even imagine how many decisions they make. Brian Wansink, director of Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab and author of Mindless Eating, found that the average study participant estimated that they made fewer than 15 food-related decisions a day. The actual number was closer to 220.
In fact, a number of his discoveries suggest that people have very little awareness of how much they eat. In one study, subjects were given access to all-they-could-eat and either "normal" or "exaggerated treatment"-sized plates. Seventy-three percent of those in the second group claimed to have consumed a standard portion, when in fact, they ate 31 percent more than those in the control group.
In another study, subjects with access to a bowl of multicolored M&Ms; absentmindedly ate twice as much as when offered a monochromatic option. In both cases, most were unaware that they had eaten more.
It's clear that environmental cues play important roles in how much we eat. When put in a situation where they can take as much as they can carry, there is no incentive for people to limit their take. In fact, Wansink's research suggests they don't even notice the obscene amounts they heap in front of them. Besides taking more, they tend to eat more and leave more over when they're done.
Enter Penn's Portion Control police. Removing trays simply forces diners to slow down and consider whether they're actually hungry before getting more food. Given a moment to think, the answer turns out to be 'no' more often than when the food is already right in front of them.
Though Dining Services may seem to be playing the role of overbearing parent, it's wrong to view its actions as limiting choice.
Rather, students are able to exercise more control once the subconscious environmental cues encouraging over-eating have been removed. Removing trays should cause students to eat less and waste less. If Wansink's research is any indication, the best part is that they may never notice.
Mordechai Treiger is a College junior from Seattle, and can be reached at treiger@dailypennsylvanian.com. Fridays with Mordi appears on alternating Fridays.
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
DonatePlease note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.