5 things: Laid-off Meta cafeteria workers want same severance benefits as company employees

In this edition of 5 Things, Food Management highlights five things you may have missed recently about developments affecting onsite dining.

Here’s your list for today:

The more than 100 subcontracted cafeteria workers who were recently laid off at Meta Platforms Inc. are asking the giant tech company to give them the same severance and benefits as directly employed office, which reportedly included 16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks for each year of service, along with six months of healthcare coverage. The laid-off cafeteria workers, who were directly employed by Meta vendor Flagship Facility Services Inc., are asking for similar benefits, including four months of pay plus two weeks for every year of service, healthcare for six months, recall right for five years and two weeks to accept a transfer.

Read more: Laid-off Meta cafeteria workers ask for the same severance as the company’s employees

The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) has released its first-ever report cards assembled from player surveys for their current teams and for the most part, the New Orleans Saints drew rave reviews, except for one area: food service and nutrition, which got a rare F-minus. “The most common concern for Saints players is the cafeteria, as they are only one of three teams in the NFL that do not provide three meals per day to their players, and the food is rated as the 4th worst in the NFL,” the NFLPA report card stated.

Related:5 tech things: Alphabet axes cafeteria cleaning robots

Read more: NFLPA releases team report cards; Saints players grade team cafeteria an F-minus

The University of Maine Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions has launched its Maine School Cafeteria Food Waste Study pilot at four elementary schools with a series of student-directed food waste interventions co-developed over the last few months with their Maine public school Nutrition Director partners. According to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, approximately $5 million of edible food is wasted every school day in the U.S. while in many Maine schools, about three-quarters of the waste in school dumpsters is food.

Read more: UMaine Mitchell Center launches Maine School Cafeteria Food Waste Study

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra recently visited Wilma Chan Highland Hospital in Oakland to hear how Alameda County has been at treating, preventing and reversing disease by prescribing more vegetables, altering patients’ behavior and training providers—a program federal officials want to take nationwide. Alameda County's Recipe4Health program rests on prescriptions for healthy food, behavioral changes such as more exercise and training for doctors and staff to use food rather than drugs for treating, preventing and reversing certain chronic diseases. Among the results so far, 32% of patients in the program saw an improvement in their indicators of diabetes and prediabetes and 67% an improvement in their cholesterol, an indicator of cardiovascular care.

Related:5 things: Northwestern deletes calorie info from dining halls

Read more: Top health official hopes to take local 'food for medicine' program nationwide

University of Pennsylvania (Penn) Dining will create a new action plan for meeting health and safety regulations in campus dining facilities and pledged to be transparent with its cleaning procedures after inspections found numerous violations of Philadelphia health code. In an email sent to students and parents on Feb. 28, Penn Dining said it understood that there was “considerable concern in the campus community” about the inspections. A statement linked in the email described the results of the inspections as “unacceptable” and said that “swift actions” had been taken to address concerns.

Read more: Penn Dining announces action plan after reports of health code violations at dining locations

Bonus: Harvard Dining meets today’s challenges with menu, sustainability and diversity initiatives

Contact Mike Buzalka at [email protected]