Lenoir to 'Feed 5,000' for free

To promote sustainability, Carolina Dining Services plans to feed thousands — for free.

Today CDS will host an event called Feeding the 5,000, a global campaign started in the United Kingdom to raise awareness about food waste by cooking meals from food that would have otherwise been thrown away. The reason the food is thrown away is partly due to its appearance.

From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Pit and at the Top of Lenoir today, members of the UNC community can get free food prepared with these surplus ingredients.

Brandon Thomas, a spokesman for CDS, said this is the first time the event will be held at a university, and he expects a huge turnout.

“It’s students, faculty and staff — the entire University community,” he said. “We expect that it will be a pretty full house.”

Senior Mary Elizabeth Entwistle, a member of the Student Dining Board, said Feeding the 5,000 has helped increase UNC’s presence in the local community.

“We had some of our own CDS managers go out to local farms and gather produce and help us be able to feed the people and stick with the mission of sustainability. From that, we’ve created a lot of partnerships with local farmers,” she said. “We’re gonna help work with them to make sure that they’re being able to use all of their produce if they have surplus.”

Thomas said an advantage of the event is that Carolina Dining Services isn’t spending much money to buy food.

“A lot of it is food that’s gonna be donated, so it’s not gonna be a great cost to Carolina Dining to do this,” he said.

Freshman Amukelani Muyanga said UNC dining halls promote some of the same wasteful tendencies that Feeding the 5,000 wants to avoid.

“The dining halls really feed into the culture of excess here. You swipe in once and then it’s literally all you can eat. You can have a pizza and a burger and some pasta and a cookie and a milkshake and a waffle in one sitting if you wanted to,” she said. “It just makes you feel like food is always there and always in abundance, which might feed into how people approach food.”

Though she argued the dining halls don’t always inspire sustainability, Muyanga said Feeding the 5,000 has the potential to encourage people to think about wastefulness.

“I think it’s a worthwhile endeavor because even though you won’t change everybody’s thinking, everybody’s approach, it’s definitely going to spark some thoughts in a lot of people’s minds,” she said.

Entwistle said she wants the message of the event to resonate at UNC long after it’s over.

“We’re trying to encourage people that maybe when they’re filling their plate at the Top of Lenoir to take what they can eat,” she said. “We’re making sure people are mindful of where the food comes from and trying to reduce waste.”

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