The D-Spot

Author: Dina Magaril

I've been thinking a lot about food recently, which has got me thinking about eating habits and the kinds of food relationships we develop during our time at Middlebury. It might be because I just finished reading Fast Food Nation, or the fact that I've been frequenting the organic garden on a regular basis, or maybe it's living with a roommate who loves to cook healthy food that actually tastes good. All these factors forced me to reevaluate my eating habits, like my affinity for diet sodas, but it has also got me thinking about the pervasiveness of unhealthy relationships with food on this campus.

Over the years, Middlebury has taken positive initiatives to bring good, healthy food to our dining halls, like the wild Alaskan salmon Middlebury was serving at their dining halls (though I think they've since stopped) or the wide array of salad bar options, regardless of the alleged calories that may or may not be sprayed on to them. Yet, while the school has taken active positive steps like supporting local agriculture, it seems that initiatives are lost on many students who struggle with their relationship to food on a daily basis. I continue to see startlingly underweight young women running around campus, overexerting themselves at the gym and shying away from anything but a mere salad for dinner. The school addressed these issues several times in the past, but merely acknowledging that this problem exists is not doing enough. Instead of viewing food and meals as an activity to be shared and enjoyed, a frightening amount of students view eating as a competition with their peers, or worst of all, with themselves.

Some sports teams at Middlebury are already requiring their female athletes to maintain a minimum body weight in an attempt to encourage healthier habits and to perhaps alleviate some of the pressures to maintain an impossible body mass index. Still, eating habits and the disorders that arise from them remain a touchy subject that many male coaches may feel uncomfortable addressing. And this is not to say that habits of overexercising and under-eating are a direct result of the college experience; many of these students undoubtedly brought their eating habits with them from their lifestyles B.C. (Before College).

So what can the College, an institution that is well versed in nourishing our minds but perhaps less so our bodies, do to address the issues of eating on this campus?

I don't think there's an easy solution short of providing each student with private nutritionists to create unique meals for each body type - though if the price tag of our comprehensive fee keeps rising, then perhaps this is a service Middlebury should be offering.

One way to begin alleviating the problem is through food education. Having curriculums that offer classes about food, its history and the cultural phenomena resulting from it, would provide students with an appreciation for what they're eating, and encourage them to reevaluate their own relationships with food. Perhaps the college should require first-years to take a class that would explore the relationships we as students, or even as Americans, have with food. Studying the social, cultural and economic implications behind the food that we eat would equip students with what I hope would be an admiration and greater understanding of eating meals together. Raising awareness about our eating habits will at least bring the issue of nourishing our bodies to the forefront, and encourage students to speak up about food rather than be ashamed of their eating habits.