AU students will enjoy local fare in the Terrace Dining Room during Bon Appétit's fourth annual Eat Local Challenge on Sept. 30.
Nationwide, Bon Appétit's cafes and restaurants will prepare a lunch made entirely of ingredients grown within 150 miles or less of each location, with the exception of salt.
Bon Appétit's goal is to spread awareness about how a food's origins affect its taste, the environment and the economy.
Yvonne Matteson, the resident district manager for Bon Appétit said eating local helps minimize rising transportation costs and reduces the amount of pollution released from long-distance transportation.
Food in the U.S. travels between 1,500 and 2,000 miles before it gets to the consumer, which compromises the food's quality, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a D.C. think tank.
TDR's entire chef staff will travel to various local farms and select the food items they want to serve, according to Brazil Murphy, executive sous chef at TDR. Sometimes the chefs use the raw ingredients to make their own products, such as when they use locally purchased milk to create yogurt.
Murphy said that while the task of traveling to farms, hand-picking ingredients and making them into other food products sounds exhausting, it's not too difficult since many of TDR's ingredients, such as produce, beef and seafood already come from local sources.
Becky Topol, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she wondered why TDR could not use local foods more frequently.
"I just have to wonder if the idea is to save gasoline and support local farms, one day isn't going to make that much of a difference," she said.
Currently, local farmers supply all of the food in the Farm to Fork section of TDR.
Kathy LaTorre, a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs, said if TDR continued to serve students more local and environmentally friendly products, students would be receptive to it.
"This school is very environmentally aware," she said.
Matteson and Murphy both said local foods are integrated throughout all of TDR on a regular basis.
Matteson said she thinks Bon Appétit needs to do a better job of informing students about which products come from local sources and what food stations serve them. All of the food served during the Eat Local Challenge will have a label indicating its origin.
"I really wish that we were able to educate the student population in understanding that together as a group we support the local economy everyday," she said.
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