The land of food

Although I was well prepared to hunt for my own sustenance, this proved to be unnecessary. The nourishment-providing facilities are so far very reliable, always stocked up on plenty of fine meals and beverages, which I am free to help myself to three times per day, in quantities as heavenly high as I can consume.

Not from our cafeteria, but quite similar.

Whether I'm in for a nicely done beef steak with mashed potatoes and fine sauce, American-style pizza, a pita stuffed with tuna, cheese and vegetables, Asian food, or a great dish of tortellini, it is just a fraction of what makes for the utter tyranny of choice. So much free food, and I can't even taste it all! ;-)

(Oh yes, we actually had one of these the first day I came. :-D Mwhaha!)

Although there is a wide choice of drinks, you can't actually get water. That's a shame, because I'm used to drinking sparkling mineral water with my meals. Here I'm limited to a variety of sodas, milk, cocoa, chocolate, several types of coffee, and some ice tea.

However, one of the most joyful sections I found was the salad bar, with plenty of vegetables, fruits, olives, mushrooms, cheese, chicken, ham, dressings, or other salad ingredients readily available. Yummy! Not to mention the fruit salads, full of pineapple, grapes, melon, and mmmm, strawberries! :-D
I really feel like I'm getting the worth out of over $2500 my scholarship pays for the meal plan. It actually is like eating out in a decent restaurant three times a day. It's just that... they don't ask you to pay. ;-) Gone are the sad plates of dozen soft, nasty smelling fries, immersed in UHO, and a tiny little piece of meat they serve at my home university. I should just really take care and watch my intake, or else... :-(

I was moderately astonished to learn that at the end of every day, they just throw out what's left into the garbage. And it's not just some few insignificant remainders. They keep most of the meals in large amounts even past 7 pm, so when they suddenly close, the food trolleys are still quite full. Instead of having some sort of respect for high quality food that could easily feed thirty people, they just trash it. Such a waste. I mean, why don't they donate it? I've seen beggars on the streets, surely they would appreciate it. Or some orphanage, or whatever else comes to mind.

Excerpt from the traveler's journal:
The luxury of having access to unlimited quantities of great food comes at a price, though. Some of the natives exhibit incredibly advanced cases of spatial and logistic impairment, carrying around their bellies blobby rings composed generally of triesters of glycerol and carboxylic acids with a long unbranched saturated aliphatic chain, which can often reach weights of few hundred pounds. This phenomenon is becoming more common now than ever, and its increase is so dramatic, that people sometimes consider it epidemic, especially in southern parts of the country. For the first time in my life, there were moments when I felt really skinny.

(An ancient depiction of some future Americans. ;-))

The question is, can you blame them, though? What would you do, if you had access to fine, practically unlimited food from your early childhood, developed the wrong kind of habit, were surrounded by other huge people that made it look normal? What you get at the restaurant when you order lunch for one person, could do for two or three meals in Europe. And the art of simply stopping at just the right time is, unfortunately, not quite trivial to master.