Many Informatics folks, including me, enjoy occasional meals provided by the school, some in a meeting or social event, but perhaps more often as leftovers announced in the inf-people mailing list. Many of us are aware of some patterns, including catering suppliers, dietary options and serving time.

Some, including me, might have been wondering why some events only provide vegetarian options, likewise, why we see vegetarian options more often than others in the leftovers. I initially felt that non-vegetarians are neglected and thus raised the concern in a People & Culture committee meeting. Then some of the colleagues explained that the school adopts the default-vegetarian catering policy simply for sustainability and most of the events in the school offer multiple options to choose when booking!

I was happy to hear that, because food, in both ingredients and cooking methods, is part of the culture for many people and thus we should respect that of each other. At the same time I personally agree with defaulting to the most sustainable option, as food not explicitly chosen is more likely wasted. We can find the environmental impact of food ingredients in [1], and more about the university’s effort on sustainability in [2], which describes awards, projects, training and outcomes.

It should be noted that leftovers are only available after announcement in the inf-people mailing list, so let’s not take them before that. It is a little bit sad to see “Only for participants” signage in the forum ground floor lately, as it implies greedy informatics residents to the external guests.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetarianism
[2] https://www.ed.ac.uk/sustainability

Catering and dietary options / School of Informatics People and Culture by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0