Harvard junior Daniel Demetri was outraged when he noticed the changes.
"It was like, who are they kidding?" he said.
Actually, the university with the roughly $35 billion endowment was just doing what many other schools are doing in these tight times. The nation's rising food costs are creating problems for dining halls and cafeterias, and institutions serving thousands of people a day are trying to find ways to cut costs while maintaining quality.
At Harvard, it didn't last. In the face of outraged students demanding their whole grains, the school restored most of the items. But other places have stuck with the changes, or found more affordable ways to feed students.
Several schools have eliminated trays, on the theory that students will grab less if they have to carry the food in their hands. Still other schools, which charge students by the item, are increasing the cost of healthier choices.
Stephanie Savoian, a sophomore accounting major at San Diego State, ate at the facility before it went trayless.
"People would tend to grab as much stuff as they could so they didn't have to go up again, and I know from experience people would waste a lot of food that way," she said.
Food prices rose more than 4 percent in the United States last year, the biggest jump since 1990, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A similar hike is predicted this year.
Food costs globally are being driven up by a variety of factors, including the rising price of petroleum products, used not just for transportation, but for fertilizers and processing. Grain prices are increasing as they are used to produce biofuels and to feed livestock to satisfy a growing demand for meat in developing countries.
