Essay: Implementing a Meal Plan Replacement to Prevent Food Wastage at Rutgers University Dining Halls



13 Bird Avenue

Iselin, New Jersey 08830

February 26, 2017

Joseph Charette

RU Express and Board Plan Office

620 George St., Records Hall Rm 102

New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Re: Implementing a Meal Plan Replacement to Prevent Food Wastage at Rutgers University Dining Halls

Dear Mr.Charette,

The Rutgers University New Brunswick Dining Services is committed to provide an advanced and efficient food operation in a safe environment. The Rutgers Dining Pledge is “Rutgers University will contribute to sustainability by reducing its environmental footprint while enhancing its contribution to the social and economic capital of New Jersey, the nation, and the world.” (About Us). With food wastage at universities being a serious problem in our country, Rutgers University may be able to implement new method to cut down the amount of food being wasted at dining halls, which will benefit the university economically and environmentally.

Rutgers has an “all you can eat policy” which maximizes the amount of food students at the dining halls take. They take more food than they can eat leading to an immense amount of food wastage. College students think of food as scarce because they do not know when they will be going back to the dining hall so they take an excessive amount of food without considering if they can even finish it. Replacing current meal plans with a new meal plan is an effective option as well as a step forward to reducing food wastage in our country.

It is important for Rutgers to implement a solution such as terminating the “all you can eat” policy and creating meal plans that are “Declining Balance Dollars.” Declining balance is accepted as cash and works as a debit card. The money will be on their ID cards and each time a student purchases a meal in the dining hall, that amount is subtracted from their account. This will force students to think about how much food they are getting and contemplate whether it’s worth spending their money on food they might not eat. Students will be more cautious when they use their meal plan money because the more they purchase, the more their account balance declines (Dining Plans). If Rutgers enforces this plan, they can reduce the food wastage on campus as well create a model that other universities can follow.

The new meal plan at Rutgers University will save enormous amounts of money from food purchasing and food disposal costs. In addition, it will reduce the amount of food scraps being disposed to landfill and will lessen methane emissions; thus saving the environment. If you have any questions, please feel free to call me at 732-371-0015 or email me at margidesai@icloud.com.

Sincerely,

Margi Desai

Margi Desai

Preventing Food Waste at

Rutgers University – New Brunswick

Dining Halls

A proposal to reduce food wastage at Rutgers University dining halls.

Submitted by:

Margi Desai

Submitted to:

Joseph Charrette

Executive Director

RU Express and Board Plan Office

620 George St., Records Hall Room 102

New Brunswick, NJ 08901

April 5, 2017

Prepared for:

Writing for Business and the Professions

Professor James Nevius

Abstract

The amount of food that gets wasted at university dining halls increases every year. Rutgers University New Brunswick is one of the major universities in New Jersey that experiences an immense amount of food waste at their four dining halls. The Dining Services at Rutgers University provide students with a block format meal plan, which allows them to choose the number of meal swipes they think they will be using in a semester. This forces students to overestimate the amount of swipes they need. When students use a meal swipe, they are forced to buy more food than necessary so that they can reach the $8.00 limit per swipe. Students want to maximize the use of each swipe so they take more food than necessary, even though they won’t be able to finish it. In addition, the dining halls have an “all you can eat” policy, which allows students to take an immense amount of food that they most likely won’t finish. When students enter an “all you can eat” dining hall, they don’t know when they’ll be eating again so they take lots of food. At the end, all the food that the students took just because it was available to them ends up being thrown out in the garbage. Food waste is a problem throughout our nation and dining halls such as the ones at Rutgers University New Brunswick play a major role in contributing to it. The Dining Services at Rutgers University New Brunswick needs to implement a new meal plan which will only allow students to take as much as food as they can eat.

To properly implement a solution to this problem, Rutgers University New Brunswick will need to establish a “Declining Balance Dollar” meal plan.  Declining balance is accepted as cash and works as a debit card. The money is on your ID card and each time a student purchases a meal in the dining hall, that amount is subtracted from their account. This will force students to think about how much food they are getting and contemplate whether it’s worth spending their money on food they might not eat. Students will be more cautious when they use their meal plan money because the more they purchase, the more their account balance declines. Not only will this plan reduce food wastage, but it will also benefit the university both economically and environmentally.

Table of Contents

Abstract 2

Table of Figures 3

Executive Summary 6-7

Introduction 7-9

Literature Review 10-11

Plan 11-12

Budget 12-13

Discussion and Evaluation 13-14

Works Cited 15

Table of Figures

Figure 1: 2010 Total Municipal Solid Waste Generation in America 8

Figure 2: Declining Dollar Plan 9

Figure 3: Food Recovery Hierarchy 12

Figure 4: Meal Plan Options 14

Figure 5: DoPublicity Menu Boards 15

Executive Summary

Of the 130 billion pounds of food being wasted in the United States every year, 22 million pounds come from colleges (Srebotnjak). This is ironic because tremendous amounts of food are being wasted in the country where about 47 million people live right below the federal poverty line (Srebotnjak). Food insecurity is a major problem in our country and almost 50 million Americans (including 15 million children) go through the struggle of facing it everyday. Yet somehow, students at university dining halls still manage to waste so much food. Additionally, food is not the only thing that is being wasted when it’s thrown out. When people throw away food, they are throwing away resources such as water, energy, land, soil, and human labor (Hunt). For example, throwing out one pound of beef is equivalent to throwing out “1,847 gallons of water, 52 pounds of cattle feed, 260 square feet of land to grow the feed and 20 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents” (Srebotnjak). Rutgers has a “buffet-style” dining hall, which means that the managers have to overestimate the amount of food that they put out because they don’t know how much the students will eat during each meal. They take more food than they can eat which then leads to an enormous amount of food wastage (Bloom). They’d rather waste food than not have enough food – which is where the issue strikes. Furthermore, buffet-style dining halls encourage students to take more food than they can eat because they don’t know the next time they’ll be eating and they don’t think twice about how much they will actually eat. Students take advantage of buffet-style dining halls because they have an “all you can eat” policy. Either the student ends up taking too much and then throws it out or the dining hall managers put out too much food and end up throwing it out. Students are not aware of the impact that wasting food makes. Moreover, any unused visits expire at the end of each semester – resulting in a waste of money because Rutgers does not provide refunds for unused meal swipes. In this case, both food and money are being wasted.

In efforts of handling food wastage, Rutgers University pays Steve Pinter (a local pig farmer who owns Pinter Beef and Pork Farm) around $120,000 to pick up the food waste collected at the dining halls and feed into the animals in his farm (United States Environmental Protection Agency). In addition to this, Rutgers also eliminated trays in three of the four dining halls in 2014, which showed a 20% reduction in the amount of food students throw out after they eat (Alexander). Both methods show that Rutgers is taking steps towards handling food waste but there are still tremendous amounts of food being wasted at the dining halls. Another study was conducted at another university to see the impact of tray-less dining halls. For the first week, they measured liquid and solid waste with trays present in the dining halls, the next week they measured the same but without trays. The results concluded that tray-less dining halls can reduce food waste (Thiagarajah and Getty). Yes, in both of the previous examples tray-less dining halls proved to reduce food; but that does not mean it is entirely true. Although there is a reduction in food waste, a study focused on the true impact of tray-less dining halls showed that instead of tray-less dining reducing food waste, it decreased the percentage of diners who chose salads by 65.2% and saw no decrease in the percentage of diners who chose desert (Wasnik and Just). Rutgers University is making an effort toward reducing food but enormous amounts of food are still being wasted. Rutgers University needs to implement bigger changes such as a new meal plan.

It is important for Rutgers to implement a solution such as terminating the “all you can eat” policy and creating meal plans that are “Declining Balance Dollars.” Declining balance is accepted as cash and works as a debit card. The money is on your ID card and each time a student purchases a meal in the dining hall, that amount is subtracted from their account. This will force students to think about how much food they are getting and contemplate whether it’s worth spending their money on food they might not eat. Students will be more cautious when they use their meal plan money because the more they purchase, the more their account balance declines (Dining Plans). Additionally, Rutgers University can also use written message interventions around the dining halls to remind students not to waste food. The results of a study in which 540 students at a university who participated in meal plans were exposed to simple written messages interventions showed that students reduced food waste by 15% because they were now aware of the food waste problem. (Whitehair and Shanklin). If Rutgers enforces these methods, they can reduce the food wastage on campus as well create a model that other universities can follow.

The first step to this plan would be replacing the old meal plans. Instead of expecting students to estimate how many meals they will be using in a semester, they can choose to either have a platinum, gold, silver, or bronze meal plan. If they have money leftover on their meal plan, the money could rollover into the next semester that year. For example, if a student has money leftover over on their meal plan from Fall 2016, it can only rollover to Spring 2017. Spring 2017 money cannot be rolled over to Fall 2017. This will allow students to have more time to spend their money instead of it going to waste. Reducing the cost for meal plans based on the amount of food students will eat will also lower the semester budget expenses for dining hall food. Rutgers can save money on dining hall food and use that money elsewhere in addition to reducing food waste.

It would not be realistic of me to state that Rutgers University implementing a new policy to reduce food waste would somehow completely terminate food waste in colleges. However, as the third largest student dining operation in the country, Rutgers University implementing a solution to minimize food waste will make a difference and can influence other dining operations. If other universities see that certain changes in the dining halls reduce food waste, then they will try to implement those same policies within their dining halls. This is guaranteed because reducing food waste will also reduce the cost of purchasing food and garbage pick-up. Additionally, reducing food waste will prevent food scraps from being thrown into landfills and releasing methane, a toxic greenhouse gas (Food Waste).

Introduction

Food waste is a nationwide problem that has both, environmental and economical impacts. Universities, in specific, play a major role in contributing to food waste from their dining halls. Every year, 130 billion pounds of food are wasted in the United States. Of those, 22 million pounds of food is wasted on college campuses every year (Srebotnjak ). In 2010, Americans wasted just less than 35 million tons of food – which makes up the second largest component of solid waste in the United States as shown below (Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2010).

Figure 1: 2010 Total Municipal Solid Waste Generation in America

(Source: EPA 2010 Municipal Solid Waste)

Food waste negatively impacts the environment because the scraps of food that end up in landfills eventually release methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that causes climate forcing. Reducing food waste, in this situation, would then have a positive effect on our planet. In addition, food waste shows the inefficient use of resources due to the enormous amounts of food being wasted by some while others are starving. People that throw away their food do not understand how valuable food truly is and how scarce it is to some people.

 

Universities, in specific, play a major role in contributing to food waste from their dining halls. 22 million pounds of food are wasted on college campuses every year (DeMarco and Ahern).  Rutgers University – New Brunswick dining halls produce more and more food waste annually. The four dining halls waste 50 tons of food per day due to their meal plans. Rutgers has “buffet-style” dining halls, which means that the managers have to overestimate the amount of food that they put out because they don’t know how much the students will eat during each meal. They take more food than they can eat which then leads to an enormous amount of food wastage (Bloom). They’d rather waste food than not have enough food because they don’t know when they will go back to the dining hall. Furthermore, buffet-style dining halls encourage students to take more food than they can eat because they don’t want to go back in line to serve themselves more food. Students take advantages of buffet-style dining halls because they have an “all you can eat” policy. Either the student ends up taking too much and then throws it out or the dining hall managers put out too much food and end up throwing it out. Students are not aware of the impact that wasting food makes.

In 2007, Rutgers University partnered up with Pinter Farms to feed the farm animals the food scraps collected from dining hall waste. Pinter Farms collect approximately 1.125 tons of waste per day (Food Waste at Rutgers University).  Rutgers University pays Steve Pinter, the owner of the farm, $120,000 for this partnership. Although feeding the waste to farm animals has a positive environmental effects, vast amounts of food are still being wasted. Instead of trying to implement ways to make the food waste useful, we need to resolve the problem by decreasing food waste overall.

Additionally, in efforts of reducing the amount of food waste, Rutgers University instituted tray-less dining. “In the first 10 weeks since trays were eliminated this semester in three of the four dining halls, Rutgers has saved $300,000 in food costs and seen a 20 percent reduction in the amount students toss after they eat.” (Alexander). Rutgers University has been making efforts to reduce food waste but those efforts reduced food cost more than they reduced the amount of food being wasted. More needs to be done to reduce the overall amount of food waste.

The solution at hand is to replace the current meal plans. If we implement a meal plan that will disable the students to take more food than they can eat for the same price, they will be less inclined to waste food. In other words, we need to replace the “Block Format” meal plans at Rutgers to  “Declining Dollar” meal plans (Dining Plans).

Figure 2: Declining Dollar Plan

(Source: Meal Plans)

The “Declining Dollar” would force students to pay an individual price for each item they want. This will make them think twice about whether they want to purchase food that they might not eat. There would be no “buffet style”-dining hall. The cost of each item that a student purchases will be deducted from the balance on their card. If students have something of their own to lose when they waste food they will be less likely to waste food. In this case they would be losing money that can be used on food that they will actually eat.

Literature review

Rutgers University must handle food waste at its dining halls in such a way that the overall amount of food wasted will significantly decrease. Although previous efforts have proven to reduce food waste by a little amount, an effective plan that can both economically and environmentally benefit Rutgers must be implemented. The best option in this case would be replacing their current meal plan with a new one. This would allow Rutgers to significantly reduce food waste by eradicating buffet-style dining halls and meal swipes.

What is the theory behind new meal plans being the solution to reducing food waste, though? The answer is the theory of loss aversion, which is illustrated by the expression “losses loom larger than gains.” (Saka).  When students have “buffet style” dining halls, the amount of food they get does not matter. It will cost someone who gets three plates of food the same swipe that it would cost someone who gets one plate. Students have nothing more to lose than one single swipe so they take a lot more food than they can consume. Although they might be full, it’s difficult to stop eating knowing that their meals are already paid for. Buffet-style dining halls encourage students to eat bigger portions just because they can with no additional charge. The declining dollar meal plan, however, wouldn’t allow this. There would be no buffet style dining. Instead students would lose an individual amount for each item that they purchase in the dining halls. This would make them more cautious and they’ll think twice because they now have something to lose. Each item they purchase will reduce the balance on their card. In this case, students would be able to pay less for food when they are less hungry and more for food when they’re hungrier instead of paying the same amount for both amounts.  Why would a student want to purchase extra food if they are unsure about being able to eat it? This new meal plan would encourage them to only purchase food they can eat. They wouldn’t want to purchase extra food if that means that they will be both, wasting food and money that can be used another time to get food that they will actually eat.

New meal plans will benefit Rutgers both environmentally and economically. The environmental benefits consist of reducing the amount of methane in landfills, reducing resources used for food production, and reducing supplemental water (Smyth). In 2013, a study at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology proved that it’s attempts at reducing food waste on college campuses resulted in “totaling 145.4 pounds less food waste per lunch period” equaled to approximately 7,270 pounds of food saved per 10-week quarter (Students Calculate, Educate Ways for Campus Food Waste Savings). Food waste at Rose-Hulman dining hall costs $1.60 per pound, which equals to $11,787.00 per quarter and $35,361.00 per academic year that could be saved from those changes (Students Calculate, Educate Ways for Campus Food Waste Savings). Rutgers University pays Steve Pinter $30 per ton to take food scraps from the dining halls to feed it to the animals on his farm. The pulverized food scraps that Steve Pinter collects averages to about 1.125 tons per day. By reducing the tons of food that students waste at dining halls, Rutgers can save from the $125,000.00 that it pays to Steve Pinter (United States Environmental Protection Agency). Rutgers is trying to keep their problems at a minimum by making use of the food waste but that is not enough to reduce food waste overall. The economic benefits of reducing food waste at dining halls consist of reducing disposal costs, over-buying food, and labor costs. As shown on the next page, the first step in the food recovery hierarchy is source reduction by reducing the amount of surplus food created which also saves money and resources from being used.

Figure 3: Food Recovery Hierarchy

(Source: Environmental Protection Agency Food Scraps)

Swansea University implemented procedures such as reducing the number of main courses served at Fusion Café from 6 to 4 and introducing “carvery” lunches in the dining halls in efforts to reduce food waste. Reducing the main courses cut food waste by 30% and “carvery” lunches as opposed to “cafeteria service plated meals” reduced food waste by 100 portions per week which now saves the university around 5,000 euros per year. Swansea University took many actions towards reducing food waste in dining halls that led to an overall reduction in food waste of 20% from the baseline and saved $9,500 per year in food costs (Reducing Food Waste at Swansea University). Given the results at Swansea University, Rutgers University can also save money and reduce food waste at dining halls by implementing new meal plans.  

Similarly to the meal plan transition that I am proposing, University of Maryland’s dinning hall transitioned from an a-la-carte (“according to the menu”) plan to an Anytime Dining plan. Implementing the Anytime Dining plan saved them more than 6 million take out boxes and utensils. Adrienne Small, a Facilities Management recycling specialist stated, “Campus-wide waste sent to landfills also declined by more than 63 tons from 2015 to 2016” (Karlovitch). The new plan showed a drastic reduction in the amount of food thrown away. Since University of Maryland switched to the Anytime Dining Plan, it no longer has carryout waste. The university chose to take on this new meal plan because the carryout boxes would not always end up in the compost bins provided. Instead, students would take their carryout boxes to places on campus that did not have compost bins available. In order to fix this problem, the new meal plan guarantees that students will throw away there food in compost bins because all the food will stay in the dining hall. Students that attend this university have become more conscious of the waste they’re saving now as well. Megan Levy, a freshman, said that ever since the university transitioned to Anytime Dining, she throws away less food at the dining hall (Karlovitch). The Anytime Dining plan has been a real successful change at the University of Maryland. The program was a received a sustainability fund grant for $50,000.00 due to successfully cutting down about 6.2 million disposable products in the dining hall (Karlovitch).

Following the successful food waste reduction stories behind Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Swansea University, and University of Maryland, Rutgers University has the potential to be just as successful. University of Maryland’s new meal plan eliminated the take-out option at dining halls. Rutgers University currently has the take-out option which contributes greatly to food waste. By implementing the “Declining Dollar” meal plan, Rutgers University will be terminate the take-out option and will have the chance to decline drastically in the amount of food waste collected on campus.

Since food waste is a universal problem, one might ask how much of an impact Rutgers can actually make. Rutgers can act as big influence on universities throughout the nation since it is the third largest dining operation in the country. When others see universities Rutgers reducing food waste and saving money, they will instantly want to try to do the same. Rutgers has potential to make a change since it’s a big school and has such a large dining operation.

Plan

In order to implement this plan, one must completely eliminate the current meal plan. It is important to recognize the benefits of the new meal plan. The new meal will prevent students from taking on more food than they can consume, thus reducing food waste, which will then save the cost of food production and disposal.

The first step towards new meal plans would be establishing meal cards (ID cards) that can be loaded with a certain amount of money. Students must choose from four meal plan options.

Figure 4: Meal Plan Options

(Source: Dining Plans)

Once they choose the amount they want on their meal plan, they will put that much onto their account. Based on the different meal plans that students will purchase, Rutgers Dining Services will be able to estimate how much food will be needed for that semester. They will use the total amount of money received from students to approximate their budget for food production. This will be different than them overestimating the amount of food necessary for buffet-style dining halls or meal swipes.

The second step would be to purchase menu boards. Each dining hall at Rutgers University – New Brunswick would need menu boards that have individual costs for each item. This way the students will be aware of how much their total will be when they get to the register. The menu boards will be purchased from DoPublicity. There will about 3-4 menu boards in each dining hall. The slides on the menu boards will be switching constantly so that all the items will be seen. In addition, snack items and drinks will have prices labeled next to them.

The “Declining Dollar” meal plans will change students’ behaviors completely. They will be less likely to waste food because they will not want to waste money on food that they can’t eat. Declining Dollar meal plans will be more cost efficient and promote food waste reduction.

Budget

Now what will it cost to establish and use new meal plans? The “Declining Dollar” meal plan will cost a total of $600,000.00. It will be broken down into three components as shown on the next page.  

Cost

Food Purchases $500,000.00

  Labor Costs $100,000.00

  Menu Boards $5,000.00

  Total $600,000.00

Food purchases will be the largest component of expense. I am estimating $500,000.00 = based off Pennsylvania University Dubois’ Foodservice Market data since they use “Declining Dollar” meal plans as well (Surveying the College Foodservice Market). Labor costs will be $100,000.00 because cafeterias will not be self-serve anymore and we will need workers to serve. This cost does not add additional expenses since a lot of money will be saved from the previous meal plan expenses. There will be a total of 14 menu purchased from DoPublicity. Two of the bigger dining halls, Busch Dining Hall and Livingston Dining Commons, will have four menu boards each. The smaller dining halls, Brower Commons and Neilson Dining Hall, will have three menu boards each.

Figure 5: DoPublicity Menu Board Cost

(Source: Digital Signage Startup Cost Estimate Calculator)

Discussion and Evaluation Plan

The “Declining Dollar” meal plan would be a great investment for Rutgers University. It will benefit the school both economically and environmentally. Students will start to be smarter about their food purchasing choices. They will remember that they now have something to lose if they purchase food and end up wasting it. The money that they paid for the wasted food could have been used for food that they would have actually eaten. This psychological and cost efficient plan will contribute to food waste reduction, which will then save Rutgers University immense amounts of money that goes toward food purchases and food waste disposal.

If Rutgers implements this plan and sees how successful it is, other universities will have a chance to look up to and follow the same footsteps to reduce food waste. Food waste is a problem that all universities face. Various universities have worked towards reducing it yet 22 million pounds of food waste still come from dining halls. By enforcing a new meal plan, Rutgers has potential to reduce food waste overall and benefit everyone. Students will benefit from not taking on extra food, which will also prevent them from obesity. People will benefit from having more opportunities to get a job in the dining hall since more workers will be needed to serve food. Rutgers will benefit from saving food disposal expenses. The environment will benefit from having less food scraps to produce methane.

Given that Rutgers does not see gain from the new meal plan, they would have to discontinue it. Rutgers would then have to do something new with the food scraps. One option would be to start composting. Composting helps plants grow by adding organic material to soil. Composting food waste can keep the scraps out of landfills and reduce methane emissions, a dangerous greenhouse gas (Composting At Home). This will ensure that Rutgers University is still working towards benefiting the environment and it’s concerns with food waste. In either situation, Rutgers would still have the option to go back to their old meal plans. In conclusion, the “Declining Dollar” Meal Plan has the potential to reduce food waste immensely, benefit Rutgers University economically, and it will contribute positively to the environment.

Works Cited

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Bloom, Jonathan. “More Campus Waste.” Wasted Food, 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2017.

“Composting At Home.” EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, 20 Mar. 2017. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.

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Digital Signage Startup Cost Estimate Calculator.” Digital Signage Startup Cost Estimate Calculator – doPublicity. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.

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“Food Waste.” Sustainability at Iowa. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.

Hunt, Chris. Foundation, GRACE Communications. “Five Easy Ways to Reduce Food Waste.” GRACE Communications Foundation, 2016. Web. 19 Feb. 2017.

Karlovitch, Sara. “UMD’s transition to Anytime Dining has saved more than 6 million disposable products.” Diamondback News. N.p., 2 Mar. 2017. Web.

Reducing Food Waste at Swansea University. N.p.: Wrap , n.d. PDF.

Saka, Gizem. “Loss Aversion: Why Do We Hang on to Things for No Reason?” Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, 31 Aug. 2011. Web. 23 Apr. 2017.

Smyth, Danielle P., Arthur L. Fredeen, and Annie L. Booth. “Reducing solid waste in higher education: The first step towards ‘greening’ a university campus.” Resources, Conservation, and Recycling 54.11 (2010): 1007-016. ScienceDirect. Web. Sept. 2010.

Srebotnjak, Tanja. “Food Waste At U.S. Colleges And What To Do About It.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 24 Aug. 2016. Web. 01 Mar. 2017.

“Surveying the College Foodservice Market.” Foodservice Director. .Trends/FSD Census, Web. 8 March. 2017.

Thiagarajah, Krisha, and Victoria M. Getty. “Impact on Plate Waste of Switching from a Tray to a Trayless Delivery System in a University Dining Hall and Employee Response to the Switch.” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 113.1 (2013): 141-45. Clinical Key. Web. 21 Feb. 2017.

United States Environmental Protection Agency. “Feeding Animals-The Business Solution to Food Scraps.” United States Environmental Protection Agency. US EPA, 2015. Web.19 Feb. 2017.

Wansik, Brian, and David R. Just. “Trayless Cafeterias Lead Diners to Take Less Salad and Relatively More Dessert.” Public Health Nutrition 18.9 (2015): 1535-536. ProQuest. Web. 21 Feb. 2017.

Whitehair, Kelly J., Carol W. Shanklin, and Laura A. Brannon. “Written Messages Improve Edible Food Waste Behaviors in a University Dining Facility.” Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 113.1 (2013): 63-69. Clinical Key. Web. 21 Feb. 2017.