In advance of Food Day, on Oct. 24, Bowdoin Dining raised money to buy apples for a local hunger-prevention program. They encouraged people to donate 55 cents at the C-Store, or roughly the price of one apple. For every donation, Dining donated two apples to Midcoast Hunger Prevention’s Backpack Program, which puts food into school kids’ backpacks on Fridays so they don’t go hungry over the weekend.
Two years ago, when they undertook a similar effort, Bowdoin Dining donated 280 apples to the Backpack Program, according to Michele Gaillard, associate director of dining. This year, they donated 320.
Also on Monday, Bowdoin Dining organized Food Day events on Monday at Moulton and Thorne dining halls. Food Day is a national awareness-raising day about the benefits of healthy eating, the importance of supporting local farmers, and the need to end hunger—everything that Bowdoin Dining cares about, Gaillard said. It is an initiative by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which encourages finding solutions to ending hunger and promoting nutrition at the local, state, and national levels.
In both Moulton and Thorne, on Monday night, Dining also held demonstrations on how to make apple sauce. A local apple farmer, Neil Greenwood from Greenwood’s Apples in Turner, Maine, spoke at Thorne about the many varieties of apples that some say are tastier than your garden-variety Red Delicious and Granny Smith ones.
