Food dining habits

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Introduction In the year 2008 the entire planet was struggling with food and economic crisis of unprecedented scale. Six billion people were affected by it and nearly four hundred million people were driven to the point of starvation causing large scale riots in many countries. Even Virginia Tech has not remained wholly insulated to this economic and food crisis. With an annual budget of more than one billion dollars, Virginia Tech is facing budget cuts this financial year 2009 and so is the dining services consequently. The Tech dining services serves more than five million meals per year at its eleven restaurants which generate an enormous amount of degradable and non-degradable waste which is dumped in a local land filling site. And with more number of students joining the meal plan program it has only exacerbated the budgetary and waste management concerns of the dining services, trying to cater to a population far beyond it was assigned to do. With the increase in number of students eating on-campus, there has been a noted increase in generation of palatable food going as waste and as a result the land fill being filled up quickly. The largest generators of this waste from the university were from the two all you care to eat centers, that is D2 and Shultz dining hall with D2 in the lead. The waste generated has become an economic and environmental concern for the local community and this goes contradictory to our university’s motto “Ut Proism” that I may serve the community. Virginia Tech in 2008 fall sold 9,400 off-campus meal plans, bringing its total meal plan number up to 18,500, one of the largest number of college meal plans sold in United States [1]. With increasing number of students opting for meal plan, it will lead to more strain on resources and more wastage of food. Therefore, it is crucial to observe and analyze the patterns in the food habits

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