As pineapple rings ooze off a student’s slice of cherry pie, he digs in his fork and takes a bite.

Clinton Halverson, junior in civil engineering, he doesn’t necessarily like the taste of pineapples on his cherry pie, but the Friley Hall dining service trays are too small to fit all the food he wants, so he must compromise.

Seated next to him, Jeff Madsen, sophomore in electrical engineering, said his preferred method of eating is to hollow out his buns and fill them with the main course. He also puts ice cream in his milk to make milk shakes.

“We’ll try anything we can to make it taste good,” he said.

Criticizing campus dining service fare is nothing new. In the late 1800s, the book “Sketches of Iowa State College” by John Boyd Hungerford recorded students complaining, “The bread was only partially baked, the meats were underdone or overdone, the butter rancid, there were hairs in the hash, the milk was sour or diluted with water, and most of the time the quantity was insufficient.”

In March 1882, the ISU student newspaper, the Aurora, reported, “When a student is seen pacing his room with frantic strides, holding the side of his face in his hands, and uttering moans of bitterest anguish, he has not the mumps, but these are the effects of a wrestle with the Sunday evening fried cake.”

Students today may grumble about the quality of food but few actually expect death to result from eating it.

Students have not always been so lucky. In October 1900, typhoid-infected milk was served in Iowa State’s dining room, resulting in the deaths of four students.

Today, dining service goes through a sanitation inspection each semester to prevent such disasters.

Ames Sanitarian Kevin Anderson said each dining center on campus must adhere to the same safety and sanitation codes used in restaurants.

Anderson said he inspects things such as food temperature, personal hygiene of employees and cleanliness of the work environment. He said dining service always does well in sanitation inspections.

“They’re not perfect but I don’t know who is,” he said. “I’ve been here a little over 20 years and I’ve always been impressed with how they operate.”

Carol Petersen, food service manager, said dining service is also concerned with making sure students like the foods they are serving.

“We do have suggestion boxes and they do get used,” she said. If a student leaves a name or number with their suggestion, Petersen said a dining service manager would try to get in touch with them to address their concerns.

“One of the most common [complaints] is that they don’t like what’s offered,” she said. “A lot of what we get is that they’d like something served that we’re not serving — we try to meet those requests if it’s at all possible.”

Dining service has several ways of monitoring what kind of food they should be serving, she said.

“We do surveys, we do focus groups, we talk to our colleagues at other universities and one-on-one with our customers,” she said. However, Petersen said the biggest indicator of what students want is dining service’s popularity index.

The popularity index is a computerized program that shows the percentage of people who eat each product served. Petersen said foods that have consistently performed well on the popularity index are pizza, pasta, chicken tenders, grilled cheese sandwiches, hamburgers, and fries.

Foods that have low popularity indexes include casseroles and “mystery-meat type things,” she said.

Broiled fish is also low on the list, but Petersen said they serve it anyway because there is a small group of people who eat it consistently.

“I think students prefer foods that are quick to eat and are hand-held, like sandwiches, corn dogs, and hot dogs,” she said.

Jon Lewis, director of campus dining, said students are also requesting portability in where they eat their meals.

“The goal of the administration, for years, has been to increase what they call meal plan portability,” he said.

Next year, students would be able to use Dining Dollars, which are pre-purchased dining service credit, in places such as the food court of the Memorial Union, the Design Cafe, the Dog Wagon, the Vet Cafe, and the Union Drive Community Center. Dining Dollars will also remain an option in the traditional dining centers and C-Stores.

Meal plans are also being re-tooled, Lewis said.

Lewis said a problem with the current meal plan is the restrictions on when the students can eat their meals. He said next year’s meal plans will allow students to eat the number of meals they have purchased at any time throughout the week. Meal plans will also offer more Dining Dollars with the meal plans that have fewer actual meals per week in order to increase flexibility for students.

Students will also have the option of buying the Premium Plan, which will include unlimited meals at any time of the day.

“The cost [of the Premium Plan] is significantly more,” Lewis said. “But it’s been offered throughout the country, and students are willing to pay for the extra flexibility.”

Lewis said a 7.5 percent increase in meal plan costs have been slated for next year, but Iowa State will remain near the bottom of the Big 12 schools in terms of costs to students. Iowa State currently ranks as the least expensive, Lewis said.

Another big shift in the way dining service operates will be demonstrated next fall with the opening of the Union Drive Community Center.

Lewis said the center will feature display cooking, which involves letting customers watch their food be prepared. This method is already being practiced in the Hawthorne Market and Cafe and Lewis said it has been very successful.

“What you’ll see in the new UDCC is a combination of C-Store [Department of Residence convenience stores] and food,” he said.

Different sections of the UDCC will offer pizza and pasta, a grill serving hamburgers and hot dogs, a Euro kitchen offering traditional dining service fare, a deli, and a Mongolian grill. A sports club with a restaurant-like atmosphere will also serve the UDCC, and will be open until around midnight.

Both Friley dining centers will close with the opening of the UDCC and Lewis said all dining centers on campus would eventually be replaced with the type of food service the UDCC will offer. He said the increased food options and flexibility in when students eat reflected a trend in the way dining services are being run throughout the country.

Although dining service has undergone many changes since its early days in the history of Iowa State, some of the same challenges remain.

“I’ve always described dining service and food as an art rather than an exact science,” Lewis said. “It’s always difficult to mix it up — you can take the best restaurant in the world, and you wouldn’t want to eat 200 meals in a row there.”

The students eating in Friley Dining Center might agree.

“About every third week, I find a hair in my food,” Madsen said.

“They need to not serve fish at every meal every day,” said Sarah Post, sophomore in graphic design.

“Everything’s really fatty,” said Dave Keene, sophomore in industrial technology.

Bryan Pauls, sophomore in electrical engineering, made the mistake of admitting the food tasted better than what his mom made.

“Your mom must cook out of a garbage can!” Post said.

Paul said convenience made it worth it.

“It’s not so bad — you don’t have to do dishes,” he said.

Perhaps that’s the secret of the success of dining services.

Because despite the students’ lengthy complaints, by the time they were finished talking every morsel of food from their trays was gone. Some things will never change.