Meredith Aska McBride | I can't believe it's not processed!

Freshman year includes many collective rites of passage: NSO Convocation, taking a writing seminar, the meal plan.

But some people miss NSO events; many people ditched last year's convocation due to the pouring rain; and some people don't take a writing seminar until sophomore year.

But no one escapes the meal plan.

When I came to Penn Previews, I ate in Houston Hall, where I was fairly impressed by the chicken teriyaki. It wasn't my mom's delectable homemade Italian food, but I figured I could survive on it.

Then I showed up for NSO, ate in the dining halls, and dropped two sizes in the first couple weeks of school. I searched for alternatives, but a MicroFridge in the Quad limits one's options, and my parents had already paid (exorbitantly) for the meal plan, so I thought I should use it. I mainly tried to stretch my Dining Dollars, augmented by what I could make in my room.

My roommate, similarly disgusted by the dining halls but limited by her vegetarianism, discovered the egg-salad sandwiches from FarmEcology in Houston Market, and the vegan desserts from Kind Cakes. We were in relative culinary heaven. Fresh, local, tasty and healthy, on the meal plan?

Then I read this year's Penn Reading Project book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, and was bitten by the sustainable-agriculture bug. The book dissects American food production, from large-scale industrial agriculture to how Pollan hunted a boar himself to replicate ancient hunter-gatherer methods to an immensely productive organic farm in Virginia. The farm rotates its crops and animals across its land in imitation of a natural ecosystem. It does not transport its product beyond a certain radius on principle: It is intensely local.

Penn Dining should continue to work with the local-food movement in order to retain more students beyond freshman year.

As a first step, building relationships with local sources engages Penn with the community, mitigating our insular reputation. If we support local business with our considerable resources, we'll improve the area's economy, which can only help us as well.

This sort of close-proximity relationship will produce better-quality food, too, as our dining administration will know the producers and can visit their facilities to ensure accountability and transparency.

Using local food also allows Penn to remain a leader in environmentally-conscious campus practices. Local food only needs to travel a short distance, so much smaller quantities of fossil fuels are consumed.

With the Middle East, Venezuela, and other major oil producers in a strained relationship with the United States, not to mention the world's petrochemical shortage and, last, that more fossil fuel consumption just plain means more pollution, our campus should reduce usage.

"Local food" doesn't just mean food that's produced nearby - it often means organic, keeping our soil and water free of pesticides, and the cultivation of species suited to the local environment to maximize production efficiency.

This means that, for example, cattle graze on Pennsylvania pasture instead of being force-fed corn-and-antibiotic mash trucked from Iowa. These methods of farming have an excellent caloric input-to-output ratio. Local ingredients can reduce Penn's energy footprint.

We have already taken steps in this direction. FarmEcology is "an ongoing effort to work with Aramark to bring local food into the dining halls," professor Mary Summers said. Students in her Political Science 136 class developed the program several years ago. This program should be integrated into more stations in dining halls; Summers told me that students can help create buzz around the program by being aware of what's going on in dining and spreading the word on campus.

Restaurant Nights have also linked Penn students with one endpoint of local food chains. This program is starting to expand in two ways: first, to feature more restaurants that prioritize local food; and second, also to feature local producers, the beginning of our food chains.

Those of us off the meal plan should look beyond FroGro and fast food. There are farmers' markets, co-ops, and yes, urban farms right here in Philadelphia, some only blocks from campus, and it would benefit both our stomachs and community relations if we exploited the tasty opportunities in West Philadelphia and points beyond.

According to Summers, "eating locally can be a pleasure and it doesn't have to be really complicated."

She's absolutely right - and it helps the entire community as well.

Meredith Aska Mcbride is a College sophomore from Wauwatosa, Wis. Her e-mail is mcbride@dailypennsylvanian.com. Radical Chic appears on Wednesdays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.