As part of the inter-hall competition, each set of Media Reps were set the challenge of writing an article for Label. This article was submitted by Elvyn Richards and came second.
There is mostly disagreement between students as to what constitutes a good meal at the canteen. I am one of the few people for example who seems to dislike the Lasagne on offer, however one thing that most students seem to be in agreement about is that the quality of the canteen food changes on a daily basis.
Some days I wish I was self catered and just grab a take away baguette, others I rejoice in the fact that I could never cook myself anything as good as the salmon in the Elvyn canteen. Although I have to admit that the canteen food has more variety and more rotation of different meals than I expected it to have before I came to Loughborough I do wish I had gone to a self catered hall.
I underestimated both my ability to cook and the enjoyment of having the power and the independence to choose your own meal, more worryingly for the price you pay to be catered getting a baguette more than twice a week does not seem worth the money.
A second factor that determines the quality of your meal is when you go to lunch or dinner. This always incurs a debate with yourself, whether to go early and risk not beating the queue but ensuring that you get a full choice of the food on offer that day, to go in the middle and hope that the queue has died down and there is somewhere to sit, or go late and risk there being basically nothing left and having to struggle through yet another baguette.
The canteen food is clearly then a mixed bag, however it is unfair to deem it as poor as realistically its of the best quality it can be for the price and variety paid. Therefore the canteen and its food are flawed but only in the same way that any system or any human has flaws. It is therefore up to the students who complain to take this up with their hall FREEC reps or committee to change and help perfect the Jekyll and Hyde of canteen food.
