Some nights, latecomers to the 1835 Hinman dining hall don’t have to decide between burgers, pasta and stir-fry. When 7 p.m. rolls around, the trays are often empty, the best selections scooped up by the early eaters.

But on other nights, the selections at Hinman are just as varied and abundant at closing time as they are when it opens at 4:45 p.m.

Despite careful planning by SodexhoUSA, NU’s 11 food service locations inevitably generate excess prepared food for nearly every meal. And when the dining halls close at the end of the day, the leftovers have to go somewhere.

The Chicago Food Depository makes sure that ‘somewhere’ isn’t the dumpster. A nonprofit on the South Side, the Depository distributed 32.4 million pounds of rescued food to Cook County residents last year.

“We feed as many as 300,000 people a month,” says Barbara Whicker, the director of communications at the Depository. “Sodexho is a major contributor.”

Through SodexhoUSA, NU dining services donates 50 to 100 pounds of excess food to the Depository each week and larger amounts at the end of each quarter and after large catered events. NU has been working with the Depository in some capacity for six or eight years, says Paul Komelasky, regional district manager for Sodexho.

Other universities around the country, including New York University and Columbia University in New York City, also donate their excess food. The program started by Columbia students last October saves 10 to 15 pounds of food per meal. At NYU, food service provider Aramark has worked with rescue programs for almost two decades.

The NU program is younger than its counterpart at NYU and less aggressive than the program at Columbia but is better than the alternative — garbage cans and dumpsters.

“Waste is one thing we (at Sodexho) hate to see. The more we waste, the less we make (as a company),” says Eric Andersen, general manager of residence dining on the Evanston campus. “Sodexho prides itself on not wasting food.”

Andersen says his staff plans carefully to prevent overpreparation at meals. As one Sodexho employee says, “We count everything.”

But it sometimes seems that not all students share the company’s desire to prevent waste. In a sample survey taken at Hinman last Tuesday, more than half of the trays returned by students at the end of the meal had significant portions of uneaten food on them, including full bowls of applesauce, entire halves of sandwiches, full salads, full plates of fries and untouched slices of pizza.

“The biggest waste actually occurs from the student side,” says Komelasky. “The students grab four hamburgers and only eat two.”

The all-you-can-eat set-up of residential dining halls encourages food waste by students, say Sodexho employees, who see far less waste in situations like Willie’s Food Court at Norris, where students pay more and eat more.

Residential dining halls prepare enough food for a total of 4,300 students and faculty each meal. Andersen says the dining service adjusts how much it must prepare as the year progresses but that mass food production remains an inexact science.

“You don’t know the eating habits of menus until the kids eat them the first time,” says Andersen. “You have 40 percent chicken planned, but then they’ll eat only 30 percent chicken.”

Even when Sodexho adjusts its menus to fit campus eating habits, plenty of food still ends up in the trash as students leave dining halls each day.

“The food just isn’t appealing,” says Martha Finkley, a Weinberg sophomore. “It doesn’t taste good. It doesn’t look good. I eat a couple bites of it, then I’m sick of it already. And then I don’t eat enough, and I’m hungry.”

But students’ actions beyond the dining hall exit suggest that they do care in some capacity about preventing food waste. Last fall, students donated enough of their extra Bonus Bucks at the end of Fall Quarter for Sodexho to donate 2,500 pounds of food to the Depository. And when NU ended the program after one quarter, the students were not pleased.

But neither was Sodexho. Komelasky says the company enabled equal donations to the Depository at the end of Winter and Spring Quarters even though the Bonus Buck program was no longer in effect. He says they plan to continue that this year.

Despite Sodexho’s donation efforts, the dining hall food rescue programs at NU are in extended infancy. Employees are not sure of the exact pick-up schedules, Sodexho doesn’t track how much it donates and only some of the halls participate. Three hundred thousand hungry in Cook County deserve better than that. nyou