We all need food.
As human beings, our very biological make-up requires us to take in a number of nutrients in order to keep on living. Our bodies need carbohydrates, fats, and proteins for the energy that we store away; they need vitatims and minerals to help convert nutrients into energy and fortify our immune systems; they need amino acids to help break down nutrients until they are easier to absorb. In many cases, the only way we can obtain all the nutrients we need is by eating.
We all need food. And as people who have to use their brains much more actively and and for more prolonged periods of time than the average person, those who are of the age to attend university need arguably more nutrients. The brain uses 20% of the entire body's energy reserve. And just we need to refuel our bodies after depleting our energy through, say, exercise, we need to refuel pretty consistently whilst in a learning environment as well.
The first university in Pittsburgh was founded in 1787. Coincidentally, that university happened to be our very own University of Pittsburgh. Paving the way for generations and generations of higher education, Pitt was first in the line of twenty-nine colleges and universities that now make Pittsburgh one of the most innovative and technologically booming cities in the country.
To top it off, the World Population Review shows that people of the age to attend university in the city of Pittsburgh make up the highest demographic of Pittsburgh's roughly 300,000 residents.1 Considering that roughly 27,000 students were enrolled as full-time students at Pitt just this last term,2 it's not hard to imagine those numbers for the university-aged demographic beginning to add up as more and more students filter in to get their degrees at a number of accredited universities.
The lives of students are – and always have been – pretty hectic, to say the least. Usually taking anywhere from six to ten hours of class per week, which can take place at any time between 9 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., most students won’t experience a semi-regular meal schedule until after they graduate. In addition to their irregular class schedules, many students also have to work part-time, sometimes even full-time, jobs in order to make rent or pay for groceries. This, on top of going to classes, keeping up with all of their coursework, and trying to maintain a somewhat healthy sleep schedule, leaves some students at a loss when it comes to feeding themselves.
This is where restaurants come in handy. People of all walks of life go out to eat. Restaurant dining can be a very social experience, and many students do actually use it as such. But for some, the stress, exhaustion, and time constraints that come with being a student make restaurant dining a necessity on some days – even more so on Pitt’s campus.
The University of Pittsburgh is a sprawling campus, these days taking up majority of the Oakland neighborhood. Because of the area that Pitt’s campus takes up, however, it can sometimes mean that Oakland is lacking in some other amenities. For instance, the Oakland neighborhood is a food desert.3 Until the recent addition of a pop-up grocery store, this part of Pittsburgh hadn’t seen a grocery store for years. Even so, the pop-up has limited hours and prices are somewhat inflated, which leaves many students feeling like their best option is still restaurant dining.
With restaurant dining, however, comes the issue of health and safety. While we need food and while it does provide us nourishment, improperly stored, prepared, or cooked food can make us incredibly ill. Interestingly, as David Roos points out in an essay on the history of health inspections in America, even though restaurants and markets have been around in popularity since the nineteenth century, the idea of inspecting for food safety didn’t come up until the early twentieth century.4
The spark: an exposure piece on the unsanitary and inhumane conditions at slaughterhouses throughout the U.S.
People were suddenly aware of just how unaware they’d been of what they were putting in their bodies. They were outraged – so much so that Congress created the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and passed the Federal Meet Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.
It wasn’t until 1934 that the FDA started applying these regulations to restaurants as well. The creation of the “Restaurant Sanitation Program,” now known simply as the Food Code, fostered a new set of guidelines based on the scientific knowledge we have about food safety. It is not law, but most states choose to adhere to these guidelines, sending in health inspectors to see to it that restaurant goers don’t become ill because of poor conditions in restaurants.
Here in Oakland, knowing how local restaurants rank in terms of food safety could be of great interest to some of Pitt’s students. They already have pretty limited time on their hands. If going out to restaurants is meant to save students more time and energy than they would have if they made the trek out to a grocery story and then went home to cook, knowing which restaurants have health code violations might save them from contracting a foodborne illness that would set back their schedules even further.
Below is a bar chart depicting restaurants in Oakland that have incurred repeated health code violations over the past five years. It was created using the Food Facility/Restaurant Inspection Violations dataset, courtesy of the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center.5