In the heart of Silicon Valley where innovation is a way of life, the chefs at Stanford University are embracing sustainable cuisine practices that are leading to a culinary revolution. Motivated by a passion for exquisite flavors and environmental responsibility, these chefs are transforming the way we think about food and educating us on how to help the cause.
8:30 hits and the doors lock as the last student athletes hop on their electric scooter back to their dorms and leave Arrillaga dining for the final time that day. On the other side of the locked doors remains plates of uneaten food that the dining hall chefs spent hours preparing for the athletes.
What happens to the leftover food? Does it get thrown out? Saved for a later date? How can we tiptoe the line between making enough food for all students and not making too much that money and time gets wasted? Mitigating food waste is just the start of creating a sustainable cuisine in dining halls at Stanford.
Maintaining sustainable dining halls across campus is an issue. Whether you are dining at Stern, Wilbur, or Arrillaga, Stanford R&DE chefs are always struggling to find ways to mitigate food waste, source locally, and donate leftovers. As an athlete here at Stanford, I get to eat my meals in athlete dining. This part of Arrillaga dining is specifically for the student athletes here at Stanford. This allows me to see first hand the amount of food that is still sitting on the counters at the end of the night from just a small portion of the Stanford student population every night.
Kristen Gravani, the women's basketball team nutritionist, discusses that keeping the high intensity training schedule in mind, student athletes have “higher protein and antioxidant needs” than an everyday student at Stanford. Athlete dining offers multiple different types of protein every night to help meet this protein need and avoid athletes experiencing “menu fatigue”. The dining hall also offers fruits and healthy fats, “which are also critical to combating inflammation and decreasing soreness between training sessions.” Some examples from this category that athlete dining offers include; berries, chia seeds, and avocados. Overall, this means that Chef Joseph Guinto, or as his athletes call him, Chef Joe, who is the student athlete dining chef and executive chef of R&DE Stanford Dining, has to make enough food for all of these athletes to have options that will satisfy them and their athletic needs. Some student athletes eat meat, others are vegetarian, some vegan, but everyone needs options to replenish and recover properly.
Chef Joe’s main goal with every meal is “to make athletes feel at home and look forward to coming to eat every night.” He speaks on how he loves being a familiar face for these student athletes to create a safe space away from the stressors of their sport and school work while sharing memories through food. He takes pride in being a small part of his student athletes’ success and using the freshest ingredients he can. It helps him accomplish his goal of providing student athletes with a meal that not only will help them recover but that they will also enjoy. Throughout this piece Chef Joe gives us the insights into ways he is already making changes to make athlete dining in particular more sustainable, and hopes he has for the future to continue this positive change.
Chef Joe is constantly striving to be the best chef he can not only for his student athletes, but also for the environment. One of the biggest problems he faces on a daily basis, is the issue of food waste. Athletes come starving into the dining halls after competing in 3-4 hours of practice, on top of a lift. These athletes eat a lot, what might be most important is the need they have for certain categories of foods to replenish their energy and help build and maintain muscle mass, depending on what portion of their season they are in. When Chef Joe first began at Stanford, a common criticism he constantly heard was either, “there were not enough options” to meet the student athletes’ needs or he had made “too much food and was wasting time and money on them” He was constantly toying this line when he first began, and some nights he still finds he has improvements to make. He recognizes he will never be perfect, but doing what he can to meet everyone’s needs while keeping waste management in mind is always at the front of his mind.
When Chef Joe started as the athlete dining chef, the need to satisfy each athlete left him with a lot of food waste. At the end of the night he would allow the individuals who helped him prepare food throughout the day to take home plates for their families but he still ended up throwing a lot of food out. Now he makes it his mission to find creative ways to repurpose the food he is left with in a way the athletes will love.
With leftover chicken he will use it in chicken noodle soup, as a part of a salad, or even grind it and use it inside of enchiladas or fritters. Leftover berries he will freeze and use to make smoothies. Controlling how much food they put out also helps save food waste. They can save the food they have prepared by not cooking it depending on how fast the athletes are consuming. Once they see there is about half left on the serving platter they will nod the chef in the kitchen to start preparing the next batch. Along with a recycled menu so they already have an idea of how much student athletes consume certain portions of the food they have out on a given night, this helps the portions be controlled and allow what is not cooked to be frozen and not wasted. This is a huge help to Chef Joe when it comes to portioning out ingredients for meals and limiting waste.
This frozen food is then donated on Friday after Stanford Athletic Dining has closed. They work with Spoons, a local donation program that helps serve the extra food we have to local churches. Around 7:30 on a Friday evening Chef Joe will sift through the list of items that have been frozen from the week, decide what he can save and repurpose, and then donate the rest.
Another core aspect of Stanford's sustainability culinary movement is a commitment to source locally and seasonally. Chef Joe emphasizes the close partnerships Stanford dining has with local farmers. They work with farmers within a 30 mile radius of campus. Including places like Bay Farms and Bella Farms, which are local farms in the Bay Area that take pride in their quality selection of produce that includes heirloom tomatoes, Persian cucumber, peppers, and much more. It all delivers within 2-3 days keeping everything fresh. This helps reduce carbon footprint without the long distance the food has to travel to make it to campus. They also work with Black farmers out of the Central Valley as part of the Black Farmer Initiative and even source herbs, flowers, and seasonal fruits right here from the Stanford Farm.
The next step that needs to be taken to mitigate food waste is educating the student athletes. Chef Joe says for the university and students to help him, he wants them to, “be educated on how to compost and recycle.” Understanding where your food waste should go would help solve a big chunk of the time issue when it comes to food waste. He explained how all of the cups, to-go boxes, and silverware are all compostable but people just don’t know. Student athletes come into college with all sorts of backgrounds and come from all different places across the world. Implementing a waste management program that each freshman class has to go through can ensure that these students understand how to sort their food and can help mitigate incorrect sorting allowing the dining hall workers to recycle and compost properly.
One quick fix, he thinks, could be “bigger containers… when bins get full people get lazy.” There is a Stanford affiliate worker that has to sort through the trash containers to make sure everything is composted and recycled correctly. A little bit of education and intention from each student can save so much time and help make the dining halls more efficiently sustainable.
Chef Joe's continuous work exemplifies a positive shift towards sustainability for Stanford Dining, and other chefs around campus have followed. From controlling the amount of food being cooked and served at a time for students, to donating leftovers to local churches, and using local ingredients to make use of what fruits and vegetables are in season, Stanford Athlete dining has less food waste than other dining halls on campus, even with the extra options they provide their student athletes. They are putting their best foot forward when it comes to sustainable cuisine. Chef Joe says, “In the kitchen at Stanford, we are setting an example for all other chefs to follow by proving that sustainability and gastronomy can coexist harmoniously”. Chef Joe is creating a recipe for a better world- one delicious meal at a time.
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Hannah Jump is currently a masters student at Stanford in the Communications media studies department. She received her BA from Stanford in developmental psychology last spring. She plays for the Stanford Women's basketball team and is passionate about all things sports, the beach, and coffee :)
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