The Meal Plan is reportedly directed at students who can’t cook. (If your friend shared this article with you, chances are that that’s you)
Susan Kwon was having a problem. At the age of 19, she still was having a problem with learning how to cook. Though Kwon was already a sophomore and decided to go against the pricey meal plan offered at the university, cooking for herself was turning out to be a greater challenge than she had initially thought. Just as Susan was about to cave in, she heard about the University’s new Ramen Meal Plan.
In 2015, it was revealed that UC Berkeley unrolled its newest meal plan hoping to distract students from the fact that it had stopped serving fried foods at its flagship GBC restaurant. Under the new plan, students would pay a flat fee of $300 per semester for up to three cups of instant noodle ramen a day, or about half of what current UC Berkeley students were paying for a non-resident meal plan.
The plan works by allowing to students to choose from either beef, chicken or vegetable flavored instant noodles. According to one UC Berkeley spokesman, “Because we want the highest quality for our students here at UC Berkeley, we have also decided to provide students with free hot water under this new plan.”
While there are currently no statistics on how many students are participating in the new program, it was also reported that Berkeley’s Cancer Research Lab was in the process of considering conducting a study on its participants.