Food for Thought (1)

When I came here in September, I had lots of big decisions to make: what courses to take, how many hours a day to spend on Facebook, which shoes and sweaters to take with me. Things like that. One of the hardest, though, was whether to sign up for the Meal Plan. I live a long way off, but I'd visited my friend's brother at the University a couple of times last year. If I hadn't had that chance, the decision would have been somewhat random, because there would have been lots of things I wouldn't have known, but that ended up helping me a lot. No information = bad decision.

In First Year, we had to live in Res -- I chose to live in a townhouse. There are four rooms for eight people, all sharing a bathroom and a kitchen table suitable for four. I had to decide whether to sign up for a full meal plan, a Monday-Friday meal plan, a Declining-Balance meal plan, or no meal plan at all. (Declining Balance is a plan where you buy a card with several hundred dollars loaded on it, and then your balance goes down as you charge your food.) We're talking about several thousand dollars here, so I had to tackle the job in an organized way; I began by making a list of pros and cons for having a meal plan at all.

Pros:

* The cafeteria is closer to most of my classes than where I live, and my timetable could make it impossible for me to get home, make food, eat it, and get back in time for my next class.
* The cafeteria is new, huge, well-lit, and extremely pleasant. It has enormous plasma TVs in three corners that were mostly tuned to sports channels when I was there.
* There's a great variety of food. If you get tired of pizza, you can have salad, pasta, TexMex, sandwiches, soup: you name it. Some of the stations are fast-food, but at others, you order what you want and wait a minute or two for it to be put on your plate. That's for things like pork loin with vegetables and baked potato -- not exactly what you'd get at a fast food place, and not exactly what you'd cook for yourself either. And if there's anything you want that's not there, you write it on a whiteboard and they'll probably get it for you. I've talked to people about whether it works; apparently most of the time it does. But then if there are things they get that not many people choose, they'll cut them out.
* The food is fresh and tasty.
* The cafeteria is constantly being tidied up and cleaned. With eight of us sharing a kitchen, it could end up being a rather awful place to cook and eat.
* I have always liked cooking, but I don't like doing it just for myself, especially when I'm in a hurry. Since I'm usually in a hurry and my housemates all have different timetables, the enjoyment is just not there for me.
* Eating in my own place, I'll have to share a refrigerator with seven other people, and I've heard about fights between people when someone leaves it too full of their own stuff, leaves food until it gets fungus all over it, or steals someone else's food.
* If I have to cook in my own place, I think I'd buy a lot of convenience foods because that's what's easiest. I don't like them much, and not many of them are nutritionally good.
* In the cafeteria, I wouldn't be stuck with eating mostly by myself or with just a few others. I'd be able to eat with lots of other people, ones I'd just come from class with, for example. So it would be a good way of meeting more people.
* In the cafeteria, you can eat what you feel like at the time, and have as much as you want.
* The campus is quite far from the nearest decent grocery store. I'd need to take the bus once a week, and it would take well over an hour altogether. And that's if I could resist going into some other stores that are near the grocery store. It would be easy to waste a whole afternoon or evening every week.

Cons:

* In the cafeteria, you can eat what you feel like at the time, and have as much as you want: It would be hard for me to resist fries, burgers, desserts, and when I'm hungry, just plain too much of everything.
* I've heard lots of people say they gained a lot of weight as soon as they went to University. The phenomenon even has a name: "Freshman 15".
* The cafeteria is expensive, especially if you don't have a seven-day or five-day plan. And on one of those, you pay for three full meals every day. Shopping at the grocery store, I think I could save about half the money -- well into four figures over the year.
* The Declining Balance card could end up costing quite a bit more for the same food. You can't calculate a percentage, because it depends on what you choose; the more you eat, the cheaper the food is on the 5-day or 7-day plan. There's no way to go on to the 5-day or 7-day plan and have the food you've already paid for credited to you; you have to make the decision before the year begins.

Conclusion:

* I'd enjoy the cafeteria, and I don't want to eat on my own very often, or in a kitchen that gets really sleazy. But I don't want to gain a lot of weight. When I'm hungry, I don't have enough willpower to avoid loading up on fries and desserts unless I have to pay more for them. And I know that if I go into the cafeteria for breakfast every day, I'll have bacon, eggs, sausage, pancakes ... the quickest way of all to pack on the pounds.
* I'm better off with a Declining Balance card. The downside is that I'll pay more -- especially as I intend to eat at least one salad every day; they weigh the salad, and it's one of the most expensive items. But for breakfast, I'll have yogurt and a coffee from my own machine.

Not the best value, but the best choice for me.