Catering at the Faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML) and Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (FPN) is mainly outsourced to the company Eurest. The location of the faculty means that external food stores are limited, and being a busy student/staff member can often mean you don't have time to prepare a lunch. Frequently, students and staff make use of the cafeterias at lunch time- however, the menu is noticeably lacking and excludes those with dietary requirements. 

The aim of this petition is to call out the hypocrisy of these menus. It feels obvious that a University of Health Medicine and Life Sciences would care about offering healthy food options that also have a consideration for environmental impact... unfortunately, the University fails to ensure their outsourced catering team provides food options that are suitable in terms of ingredients, cost and packaging.   

The cafeteria sells a vast selection of pizzas, pastas, sandwiches, soups, meats and other dutch snacks like croquet. Some options are vegetarian, but the very select vegan options are overprices and prepackaged in plastic (4.50 for a singular sandwich or wrap, 1-2.00 for a plastic packaged cookie). 

Changes that NEED to be made:
- MORE RANGE & AFFORDABLE VEGAN OPTIONS 
Most vegetarian options on offer could be made vegan and therefore would be suited to a wider audience (including those with dairy allergies for example). The cost of the vegan options is GREEN WASHING and we need to FACILITATE options that benefit the environment during these times of climate crisis. I argue that making vegan options fresh and with more variation would increase desirability, the sales and lower the cost price per sandwich. 

-LESS UNHEALTHY OPTIONS
Many of the options at the cafeteria are unhealthy. By providing less fatty options (greasy meats and fried foods) the cafeteria users will be probed into making healthier choices. It is well known that eating unhealthy foods contributes to the onset of disease, so why is this faculty not supporting their own research and teachings in practise? Also, most of these options are SNACKS and don't constitute to a meal. Those options that do constitute as a meal- well they did provide vegan options last year but now they've disappeared into the void?

-Cut the plastic!
It can be recognised that the cafeteria is pushing people to purchase reusable cutlery and cups, however, they have not stopped serving food in plastic/non degradable packaging. I hereby request that the cafeteria stops pushing the responsibility of sustainability onto the users at a COST and starts assisting individuals to make zero-waste purchases by providing the option to buy food with bio-degradable packaging. 

THE TIME HAS COME THAT WE DEMAND THESE SYSTEMATIC CHANGES IN ORDER TO SUPPORT THE HEALTH OF OURSELVES AND OUR PLANET. WE DEMAND THAT THE HEALTH OF CONSUMERS AND THE ENVIRONMENT IS PRIORITISED WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY CAFETERIAS!! 

The University needs to understand that failing to monitor their outsourced services can come at a cost. The University also needs to start PRACTISING what they PREACH.