Hotel Management

Many students that attend Plymouth State University purchase meal plans, especially if they are first year or second year students because they are required to have a meal plan if they live on campus. Plymouth offers a selection of meal plans that range from the lowest being seventy-five meals a semester and $929, to the highest, which is two hundred seventy meals and $1,505. Both of these meal plans are expensive, but Plymouth State offers one the lowest costing meal plans in New Hampshire. Many students are under the impression that the reason Plymouth State has one of the lowest costing meal plans is because the company that we purchase our foods from, Sodexo, serve the students low quality foods that do not cost much money to purchase and prepare. There are many students that claim that the food they eat in the Prospect Dining Hall makes them sick and is overall unhealthy, but a statement like that must be fallacious because no respected college is going to hire a company to serve food to paying students that is unhealthy and over all cheap.

Sodexo is a large corporate company that provides foods to different places across the country. Plymouth State University has hired and trusted to feed their student well and keep them healthy. Sodexo is not only used by Plymouth State, but by other colleges, hospitals, senior living facilities, military bases and school districts around the country. "Sodexo, Inc. is a world leader in Quality of Daily Life Solutions in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, serving 10 million consumers in 6,000 locations everyday. Our dedication to excellent service, corporate citizenship, and fighting hunger all come from one goal- to make every day a better day." Sodexo. Even though Sodexo claims to have excellent service and feeds up to ten million costumers a day, does that solidify the questions of what the quality of the foods are, or does it still leave that question up in the air? Many students that eat the Sodexo foods don't agree with the statements about high quality foods and happy customers because when they leave the dining hall they feel like they have eaten food that have no nutritional value and are overall bad for their body.

There are many students that do not believe Sodexo foods are healthy and nutritious, and I don't blame them. From a personal experience, every two out of three times I eat at the Prospect Dining Hall, my body has felt awful. I didn't have any energy from the food I consumed, and I felt sick to my stomach and had wished that I had just not eaten that meal. There are a lot of students that feel the same way after eating in the cafeteria, and it seems like there is nothing that they can do to change the awful feeling they get after they finish their meals. On the Plymouth State Dining Services website, students and consumers of Sodexo foods are able to read about the qualities and the nutrition facts about the foods they are consuming. "Sodexo provides fresh, nutritious meals while working within the ethnic, cultural and nutritional needs of our clients." Sodexo. On the website, Sodexo offers several different options to figuring out the healthy choices when dining in the cafeteria and there is information about where the food comes from.

There are six different main brands that Sodexo uses to prepare all their food from. They own each of the six brands and all of them are different. One of them is focused around sandwiches another is Mexican foods and there is also an Asian one too. Each of the brands is a different station in the cafeteria, they are all different and they use different produce. On the Plymouth State Dining Services website there is a list of places that the cafeteria gets their food from. They claim to use local foods when they can, and they also say that use foods from mainly the New England area. Surprisingly the Prospect Dining Hall uses Nellies Nest Cage Free Eggs, using that product means that they are supporting the cause against keeping chickens in tight cages where they can't move around and it is good for the students to consume. Looking at the website and seeing all of the different local organizations that Sodexo is purchasing food from makes me feel much better about the food in the dining hall. Many students are unaware of the fresh and local product that Sodexo uses to prepare their food, if they were more educated about the products that they use then the student would feel better about eating there.

There are numerous students and consumers of the Sodexo foods that are unaware of the multiple options and advice to eating healthy in the Prospect Dining Hall. On their website under nutrition information, they offer an online nutrition counter; all you have to do, is enter the food you ate, and the portion size and it will figure out all the nutrition facts. By using this online device, it is easy for student to see the health benefits of the food they're eating or the risk factors. A lot of students are unaware of what kinds of food they are ingesting because there are no nutrition facts on the foods in the dining hall. Not having the nutrition facts on the food faces a dilemma for the students because they are blind to what foods they are eating. On the website there are also two other links to benefit student whom are looking for healthy eating. There is BMI calculator, all you have to do is type in you're weight, and you're height and it will tell you if you're weight is correct for the height of your body. There is also a balance article, which gives you advice to choosing healthy options in the dining hall. There one more option for students to make