Ahhh… Food. Food, Food, Food. Everybody loves food, right? Some eat to live, and others live to eat, but say what. The issue at hand here is college food, or more specifically college cafeteria food. When it comes to cafeteria food, in my experience, it became a case of simply trying to survive the food. And let me tell you, after four years, survival became a mere afterthought! I recently graduated from a small private university in the state of Florida, and looking back after my four years there made me realize one thing… the food absolutely… well, you know!!! Now wait… I understand that catering for a large number of people on a daily basis is not an easy process, and that it is virtually impossible to please everyone… but sometimes the offerings would rival the menu served to general population inmates at a state prison!

For example, buffet breakfast on a daily basis consisted of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, pancakes, fruit, etc. Not bad, right? Think again! These scrambled eggs were powdered eggs. POWDERED EGGS!!! Come on, if that’s not a sure path to an early death, I don’t know what is. I would think that a University that costs about $20,000 a year could at least afford some real eggs. No wonder I couldn’t stay awake in class! The bacon… at times burnt even darker than the Black Hole, or dripping with so much grease that not even Rosanne would give it a second look! The grits… one day hard, one day soft, one day hard, one day soft… no wonder Goldilocks preferred porridge instead! The pancakes… I’ll give you $20 if you could chew and swallow in less than 30 minutes! The sausage… the less said the better. Last but not least, the fruit. If you were lucky it might be fruit left back from the weekend buffet. Mmmm…mmmm don’t you just love bananas so ripe that they come out the same way they went in! Or apples and pears more battered and bruised than Rodney King himself!

Now look people, I never expected cafeteria food in college to be the greatest, but when you’re dying of hunger and still avoiding the cafeteria at all costs, something isn’t right! Ironically, I described a typical breakfast on a daily basis. The sad thing is that the lunch and dinner was even worse. For example, the soup and salad section was so bad it was comical at times. Lunch would be put out from 11:30 am. Unfortunatly, the soup and salad put out at that time would be the same until dinner ended at 7:30pm! Can’t a guy get a bowl of fresh soup around here? The soup itself – most times a combination of leftovers from the weekend buffet! Come on, man!!! Lettuce is supposed to be green, right? The brown spots on always confused me. Last but not least, Meat - an essential part of every nutritious diet. When you have difficulty differentiating whether the meat is chicken, beef, or road kill from the nearest highway, that’s a problem. The examples are aplenty, but unfortunately I’m getting indigestion just thinking about it. Hey, you win some, you lose some. That’s life I guess. If anyone is hungry come join me… I’ll be eating Ramen noodles instead!