5 things: Grubhub partners with robot firm for campus meal deliveries

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:

Mobile food-ordering/delivery platform Grubhub, which operates on more than 250 college campuses across the United States, has announced a multi-year partnership with robot delivery unit vendor Yandex to deploy Yandex robots on-site for automated meal deliveries to complement its existing capabilities tailored for colleges and universities. Grubhub and Yandex’s partnership will be available to universities for the fall semester.

Read more: Grubhub and Yandex SDG Partner for Robot Delivery on College Campuses

The number of adolescents admitted to the hospital for severe illness from eating disorders has increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, new research suggests. "Adolescents may be particularly vulnerable to negative effects of societal upheaval related to the pandemic and to developing eating disorders during the COVID-19 era," says lead author Alana Otto, M.D., M.P.H., an adolescent medicine physician at University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. "Providers who care for adolescents and teens should be attuned to these risks and monitor patients for signs and symptoms of an eating disorder."

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Read more: Study: Hospitalizations for eating disorders spike among adolescents during COVID

Reports of workers relocating far away from their workplaces, thus making any return to the office even for a few days a week unlikely, may be exaggerated, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, which is good news for the in-house dining programs at those offices. "Interestingly, they’re mostly moving to the suburbs," says Mark Muro, senior fellow and policy director who was one of the report's authors. "They’re not moving, for the most part, to Wichita to save the heartland. They’re moving either farther out within the metro or into nearby counties. So nearby counties around the New York area or in the Bay Area, moving to Alameda County, and so on. And they’re mostly shorter moves."

Read more: Remote workers are moving out of big cities — but not to the Midwest

A Duke University research team’s deeper examination of the nutritional content of plant-based meat alternatives shows that beef contained 22 metabolites that the plant substitute did not, and the plant-based substitute contained 31 metabolites that meat did not. Metabolites are building blocks of the body’s biochemistry, crucial to the conversion of energy, signaling between cells, building structures and tearing them down, and a host of other functions.

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“It is important for consumers to understand that these products should not be viewed as nutritionally interchangeable, but that’s not to say that one is better than the other,” Stephan van Vliet, a postdoctoral researcher at the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute who led the research. “Plant and animal foods can be complementary, because they provide different nutrients.”

Read more: Lab Analysis Finds Near-Meat and Meat Are Not Nutritionally Equivalent

After a first year of COVID-limited operations, Chartwells Higher Ed has major upgrades and changes planned for the dining program this fall at the University of Pittsburgh, which it took over operating last year. They include a “modest” increase in costs for this year’s meal plans, two new dining options in the William Pitt Union—street taco concept PA Taco Co. and Wicked Pie, a "farm to pizza" concept that uses hyper-local ingredients—plus the Smokeland BBQ line and food truck and the student-run Saxbys Coffee, which is opening a location in the Cathedral of Learning and Hillman Library. Menu line-ups at The Eatery and The Perch will also be expanded to include more plant-forward, vegan, vegetarian, Kosher and halal options.

Read more: Compass looks to further improve Pitt dining experience this fall

Bonus: SNA survey indicates anxiety over coming K-12 school year

Contact Mike Buzalka at [email protected]