Dear Chef Philip,
I would like to thank you and your team on behalf of my peers for making so many delicious dishes. I have often seen faculty and students take out their phones to photograph their plates. But yesterday, as I grabbed a cookie and wrapped it in a napkin, I was surprised by the amount of oil that appeared on its surface. The next morning, I did an experiment by putting abreakfast pastry in a bowl and microwaving it for oneminute. Surprisingly, I saw the bread soaking in a yellow liquid.
This made me concerned about the amount of cooking oil that our cafeteria uses to prepare our food. Although our food tastes and looks good, health should be the highest priority. Recently I also noticed that even the same dish might taste differently, sometimes very salty, sometimes perfect, sometimes no flavor at all. It seems as if different cooks follow different recipes, and sometimes Cook Kara likes being creative. It is my greatest wish to have a uniform recipe so that we do not experience the same food with different flavors.
During my college tour to different universities, I noticed that in most of their cafeterias, they have a card next to each dish indicating how many calories it contains. I sincerely hope that our school can also set up the same system so that we know how many calories we consume every day. Calorie indication can also be taken as an encouragement for other cooks (besides you) to follow the same recipe for the same dish—they will put in the right amount of ingredients. Knowing what I am eating and how many calories I consume everyday gives me a sense of awareness. I gained 15 pounds when I first came here, and only later did I learn how many calories the cookies, the fried fish, the hamburgers etc. have. So from then on, I entered a phase where I became suspicious of all the food around me, and only trusted salad or fruit. Some students gave up eating the meat in our cafeteria altogether after realizing how much fat it contains. A calorie indication allows students to balance what they eat without gaining extra weight.
I am looking forward to hearing from you!
Best,
May