Aside from classes, professors and organizations, one thing remains ever-present in every university setting: Its cafeteria.
In the Ateneo’s case, the main cafeteria is located at Gonzaga Hall. Other places to dine are scattered around campus, including the John Gokongwei School of Management Student Enterprise Center (JSEC), Zekaf and the satellite cafeteria by the College Covered Courts.
More than just being simple dining areas, cafeterias are the center of the bustling student life in the Ateneo. Block lunches, hangouts and even study groups are all done within the confines of these areas. As such, it is important for the cleanliness of their environment be maintained. Beyond looking at the how clean the tables are, it is also important to ensure that the food served at these cafeterias is prepared sanitarily as well.
The Ateneo has an entire office dedicated to ensuring the sanitation of food in the Ateneo—the Office of Food Safety and Quality Assurance (OFSQA). The OFSQA ensures that the food that they allow to be sold on the campus cafeterias is safe and sanitary.
However, even when these strict rules, it seems that there is still room for improvement when it comes to food sanitation in the cafeterias of the Loyola Schools (LS). Students still report seeing hair—or even insects—in their food. The question stands: What is the university doing to ensure food sanitation in the cafeterias?
Office efforts
The OFSQA assures that food sanitation is a priority on the administrative level. The office shares that it uses a scientific tool—the Five-Point Hedonic Scale—to measure “consumer acceptability” when it comes to picking concessionaires for the Gonzaga Hall cafeteria. The scale measures food quality, value for money, presentation and appeal, nutritional value and food sanitation.
The office also shares that it submits a yearly performance evaluation of the stalls in the cafeteria, where “incident reports, food complaints [and] non-conformity to food safety measures are reported.” These are taken into consideration in the renewal process of the concessionaires’ contracts.
The OFSQA does not just inspect sanitation on the administrative level, however. They make sure that that the food stalls remain clean and sanitary during operations. In addition to visiting school cafeterias thrice weekly, the office shares that they also have food safety and quality assurance officers stationed at the cafeterias. “These officers make sure that the cafeteria food service operations and food events are assessed thoroughly, inspected and monitored on a periodic basis,” the office says.
Recently, the office has also implemented the Mystery Guest Program, where surprise visits from “different stakeholders” taste the food, observe the customer service and evaluate the sanitation practices of the stalls. The office shares that this program has been especially helpful in its quality assessment activities.
Another thing that helps the OFSQA is when students themselves report incidents of unhygienic practices of food servers or unclean food. The office assures that these reports are duly investigated, keeping in mind that the investigation must be fair to both the complainant and the concessionaire.
Shella Ef-Em Montinola, supervisor of the OFSQA, says that formative training regarding proper hygiene and food sanitation is given to the food servers who are observed not to practice good hygiene. “These non-conformities are recorded in our inspection logbooks and a feedback mechanism is in place to ensure that the food service operators are reminded to strictly comply with the school food safety policies,” she adds.
Cooking clean
The personnel who work in the Gonzaga Hall cafeteria are adamant about showing discipline that the OFSQA requires from them.
Regine Ballesteros, who works at Obento Express, insists that everything they serve is perfectly clean. As proof, she cites the strenuous process their raw materials go through. According to her, before they can actually start handling the raw ingredients, everything must go through the quality assurance test, which the OFSQA handles. Ballesteros adds that, aside from this, the food suppliers must have already made sure that all the food has passed all required standards.
Moreover, Ballesteros assures that everything they serve is fresh, since food is delivered to them everyday. No leftovers are used and recycled.
Cyndxia Monte, who works at Sakamura, feels the same way as Ballesteros regarding the food that they serve. Monte says that their raw materials come from certified and trusted sellers. One proof of the sellers’ authenticity is the certificates that they receive from the local government.
In addition to making sure that the raw materials are clean, Monte and Ballesteros also work hard to make sure that they do their part in keeping the food clean. Both of them cite the protocols while cooking, such as wearing gloves, aprons and especially hairnets.
While cooking, the two also make sure that the food is kept clean. According to Monte, when handling vegetables, she washes them first and adds salt to make sure that they remain clean. She also says that everything really has to be washed, especially protein. Taking chicken, a protein highly susceptible to bacteria and dirt, as an example, she emphasizes the need to be clean in order to avoid health concerns such as food poisoning.
Lastly, Ballesteros also says that the utensils they use—from pans to spatulas to serving spoons—must be kept clean. She says that all utensils have to be dipped in hot water in order to sterilize them.
Missing the mark
However, while the ates and kuyas may say that these are measures they take, observation of the stalls may tell a different story—one far less spotless than they let on.
Upon first look, stalls in Gonzaga Hall may not look like the most sanitary food stalls in the world. In a stall on the second floor of Gonzaga Hall, pans are kept below the sink, barely kept from the dirty ground. The only surface keeping them from touching the floor is a thin piece of cardboard. Meanwhile, in other stalls, food containers are left open, inviting insects like flies. The tables in Gonzaga Hall themselves can have the same leftover scraps of chicken on its surface the whole day.
Basic food sanitation protocols are observed: Female employees wear hairnets and male employees wear caps when handling food. Employees also wear plastic gloves and aprons when handling the ingredients.
However, these sanitation protocols are not something that is practiced across the board. Some workers in other stalls do not wear gloves. Monte defends that they do not use gloves when handling ingredients that have yet to be washed. However, she insists that they immediately wear gloves when the actual cooking process has begun.
Experientially, students may notice that the main trouble in the cafeterias in school is the utensils. Some of the utensils—especially in Gonzaga Hall—appear not to be clean, with clearly visible dirt stains and even food residue. This is alarming, considering the number of students who use the very same utensils.
Aside from less-than-spotless food stalls and utensils, students also complain of seeing unpleasant things in their food. It is a common experience for a student to find hair in his or her meal, but some incidents are extreme.
A recent incident involving a popular JSEC stall was one that took social media by storm: A student was served a hamburger. A few bites later, the student discovers that a beetle had been burrowed in his lunch. The OFSQA has since ruled the complaint against the JSEC stall invalid for lack of evidence.
Mikee Defensor, a political science sophomore, is another student who experienced finding something truly unexpected in her food. She bought food from a JSEC stall that she regularly visits. “I was eating it, and I felt something hard,” she says. She did not think too much of it because it regularly happens that, when she buys food from this stall, there is still plastic on the ingredients when it is served to her. This time, though, she says it was different, because even though she kept trying to chew the item, she could not. “I took it out, and when I took it out, it was a nail,” Defensor says. “It wasn’t even half a nail—it was a perfectly cut nail.”
She also shares that she went back to the stall and showed the nail to the workers there. At first, they denied that the nail came from them, but one of the women working at the stall took the nail and fit it on her finger—and it fit perfectly. Defensor says that two of the people working at the stall said they did not cut their nails there, but one of the workers just stayed silent.
Defensor also explained that the stall had not refunded her, and that the workers were particularly “masungit” about it.
Gloves
Although this is the first time anything like this happened to Defensor, she says it does make her think about how strict the OFSQA is now.
“[With] all these things happening, are they really regulating [the food stalls] well?” she asks. “They’re supposed to be checking on [the stalls] every single day—is that still happening? Some of the people working [at the food stalls] don’t even wear hairnets anymore.”
“Yes, there is a lot of room for improvement,” Montinola concedes. While there has been progress in offering better, more nutritious food and better customer service, the office still strives to achieve “food service excellence, zero complaints, and the highest standards of food quality.”
She closes with a quote from Benjamin Franklin: “Without continual growth and progress, such words as ‘improvement,’ ‘achievement’ and ‘success’ have no meaning.”
In ordinary circumstances, students need not fret about the cleanliness of the food in the LS, then. The food is in good hands—good, clean, sanitary hands. But on the off-chance dirt lands on them, they are ready to wash it off, put on new gloves, and get back to work.
A sanitary mandate
By Mint A. Marquez
The Office of Food Sanitation and Quality Assessment (OFSQA) set strict rules for the food concessionaires in the Loyola Schools cafeterias. From prescribing what food servers should be wearing to setting guidelines for how food should be stored, the OFSQA puts a premium on ensuring food sanitation and safety in the university. These mandates are given to every concessionaire and each food handler is expected to know these by heart.
These mandates are subject to yearly review and revision. Listed here are some food safety policies that the OFSQA implemented this year.
- There is a prescribed uniform for food personnel: Slacks and shirts or chef jackets, closed shoes, and hairnets or caps. Hair must also be tidy—barber’s cut for male food handlers and hair tied back for female food handlers. Aprons and chef jackets are also not allowed to be worn inside restrooms. Additionally, food handlers are not allowed to wear jewelry (except wedding bands). Their nails must always be clean, short and unpainted.
- All food personnel must wash, sanitize and dry their hands before handling food. They must also wear gloves.
- The food handlers may not handle money and the cashiers may not handle food.
- All food personnel must have updated health permits available upon request.
- Requirements for food storage should be appropriate for the type of food: In subzero freezers for meat, in 10º C freezers for semi-processed food (like hotdogs and siomai) and dairy products, and in refrigerators for fresh fruits.
- Ice cubes must be placed in separate ice chests from food.
- Refrigerators and freezers must not be overstuffed. Cold air must circulate to keep the food safe.
- Ingredients must always be up to standards. Canned goods must not have dents and raw materials must not show any signs of spoilage. Farm eggs must not have broken shells. Additionally, they must only be kept within their expiration dates.
- Leftover food that was not sold may not be resold the next day. Leftover food must be disposed of on the day of food service operations.
- Tableware and kitchenware must be clean and in good condition.
