On Monday, Jan. 15, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) introduced a meal formulation to help Americans that are struggling with grocery prices to “eat healthy on a budget.” This meal, which has been based on thousands of “simulations”, consists of a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla and “one other thing” for a price of $3.
When briefed on the news at their weekly Carleton Humans for Intelligent Culinary Kitchen Encouragement and Normalcy (CHICKEN), BonAppetit and Carleton Dining Services embraced the idea of the $3 meal, electing to bring the concept to the student dining plan, particularly those affected by the highly limited dining dollars allotted by the 7.
The proposal, in an effort to assist students who find themselves running out of dining dollars by midterm break, is a $3 “meal equivalency” perfectly adhering to the USDA framework. Providing a piece of grilled chicken, appropriately burnt and only eight or so hours old, a piece of broccoli which satisfies a student’s sodium needs for the next week, a corn tortilla that has not been heated up and another thing.
The main problem in this meal formulation was finding out what that “other thing” would be. While BonApp did not care much about the meal being worth $3, considering a Burton lunch is $13.85, they absolutely did not want to exceed the monetary limit.
“Someone suggested the fourth thing be a mozzarella stick. Are you kidding me?” said Penny Saever, a dining services manager. “A single mozzarella stick already costs more than a dollar; how do you expect us to fit that into the cost? Even one onion ring is pushing it, considering those are six for $2.80, even when three are stuck together in an undercooked blob of batter. We were thinking about just doing the weird onion end pieces, but there’s not enough to meet demand.”
After cycling through options such as two sweet potato tots, a cup of vaguely green gelatin without the whipped cream (determined to be budget) and half a serving of brown lettuce from the Burton Taqueria, the employees decided that the best course of action would be to replace the fourth item with a punch card, and every time a student purchases six $3 meals, they can get the seventh for $2.
BonApp also announced that a vegetarian/vegan option would be available in the substitution of the chicken with a tofu brick, but for budget reasons it would be one-third of a serving and have the gloopy orange sauce scraped off.
