BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — After four years of going to Bowling Green State University, Katie Dietz realized that sometimes students needed more than just the standard college food.
She especially saw a need for healthy, pre-made meals and found the solution right on campus.
Before Katie Dietz formed her senior honors project, she was interning in the university dining center and volunteering at the Falcon Food Pantry. It gave her the rare opportunity to not only identify two problems - food waste and food insecurity - but also the impact both have on her fellow students.
"After looking into it a little bit further, food insecurity can affect education, sleep, mental health, weight," Dietz said. "And I didn't realize how many people around me were struggling with food insecurity or experiencing food insecurity and seeing that we had so much leftover food, I wanted to be able to help them."
Dietz said that over the weekends, fewer students are on campus and even fewer eat at the dining halls. Because of this, full trays of food and pots of soup go to waste.
For her senior project, she created the Feed More - Waste Less program that has now helped to serve the nearly 1,000 students a month who visit the Falcon Food Pantry.
Dr. Shannon Orr, director of the Falcon Food Pantry, said the initiative makes a difference. The pantry has a lot of ingredients, Orr said, but it is not exactly convenient for all students.
"We have pasta, we have vegetables, we have sauces, but a lot of our students are struggling with not knowing how to cook or they don't have very good cooking facilities in their apartments," Orr said. "And so this innovative, creative idea to provide full, complete cooked meals that just have to be heated up in a microwave. And we have microwaves all over campus, so these really help students who are going through some really tough times."
Dietz plans to graduate this spring, however, the Falcon Food Pantry plans to continue offering meals to feed more and waste less.