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REPRINTED SUNDAY GLOBE-AUGUST 23, 2015
UMass is on a mission to
change the way we eat
The school’s dining staff aims to become a national model for affordable, high-volume sourcing of locally grown food.
By Kathleen Kingsbury
Each day, 18,000 students, faculty, staff, and visitors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus eat around 50,000 meals. That’s some 6 million meals per year and $85 million in revenue, making it the nation’s largest university foodservice program.
The school’s dining staff, however, is on a grander mission than just meeting demand: to become a national model for affordable, high-volume sourcing of locally grown food. It renovated one
of its four dining halls, Hampshire Dining Commons, as a testing ground for this effort and, this fall, will release a how-to guide for other institutions looking to do the same.
Ken Toong heads up the initiative. Ideas recently spoke with Toong and his colleagues, Garett Distefano, director of residential dining, and Rachel Dutton, manager of sustainability, by telephone. Below is an edited excerpt.
IDEAS: A lot has been written about how young people are taking a more active and informed approach to what they eat. How does that translate on campus?
170 – TASTE OF HOME