News

2008.0430

HDFS Students Sell Their Healthy Lunch Boxes

By Sabrina Lin Campus Reporter A total of 150 homemade and healthy lunch boxes are available every Wednesday as long as the reservation can be done as early as possible, while a group of Department of Human Development and Family Studies students are working on this lunch boxes selling as a part of their class requirements. A group of 33 students from the department who are taking the “Quantity Food Production Management and Practice” class began to sell homemade lunch boxes on April 23.  Upon Associate Professor Anna Liu’s (劉元安) request, these students would produce 150 lunch boxes every week and sell them every Wednesday.  Tung Yung-hao (童永豪), a sophomore from the department, said that they only accept reservations, which can be made between Wednesday and Tuesday, and cash for the purchase. "Reservations are opened to the public every Tuesday at the scene.  Whoever is interested in our lunch boxes must act fast because these weekly 150 lunch boxes can be sold out within hours,” Tung said. Liu said that for the next seven weeks, these students will have their booth at the hallway between Chin Building and Pu Building between 12pm and 1pm every day.  Reservations for lunch boxes can only be made at the scene and these weekly 150 lunch boxes, which costs NT$65 each, are only delivered every Wedneday. The professor said that her class was designed for training students to run an actual restaurant.  As a result, these 33 students were divided into eight groups.  Each group will take turns managing each week’s operation, from grocery shopping, cooking, marketing and the actual selling.  Lu said that they always did their grocery shopping at the Nanman Market which her students have been constantly doing for the past few semesters.  Students also need to learn how to balance their finance, since the price for each lunch box is fixed. In addition to running the business, students also need to learn to control the total calories for each lunch box at around 700.  All the 150 lunch boxes are made at their classroom with professional kitchen facilities. "No MSG is used in our lunch boxes.  It is absolutely low-fat and healthy since it is our major concern during the production process,” Liu said. The professor said that her students followed the manual of daily nutrition for adults by the Cabinet’s Department of Health while they are cooking and making these lunch boxes.  But, obviously, these healthy lunch boxes may not be good enough to feed and satisfy everybody. "I am a bit disappointed when I first saw the lunch box….it is a bit small,” said Lin Chun-tzu (林淳慈), a junior from the Department of Chinese.