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the fact that american college dorms do not have kitchen is something i find absolutely idiotic. Why are there no shared kitchens? Most dorm-like university bu

the fact that american college dorms do not have kitchen is something i find absolutely idiotic. Why are there no shared kitchens? Most dorm-like university buildings i have seen in my country have shared kitchens for a couple of rooms or an entire floor.

xiphias2 8y ago
Another thing that's idiotic is that I can't even find ,,kitchen'' mentioned in the article about food on college campus. Without this top comment I wouldn't have understood the real problem. I mean why would I pay another company for breakfast when making an omlette with some vegetables is so easy?
swampthinker 8y ago
Fire hazards + only takes a few bad actors to ruin a kitchen. There also is there as much of a cooking culture in the US
- kazen44 8y ago
  Fire hazards are not a good enough reason to not have kitchens? US college students are adults right? Why would they not have any acces to a kitchen because of a possible fire hazard. In terms of 'bad actors' ruining a kitchen, that seems more like a social problem more then anything else. Breaking a kitchen also seems like a senseless idea, especially in a community of people you live with.
  - swampthinker 8y ago
    US college students are young adults, 4 months removed from Highschool in most cases. They're also for the most part unsupervised in their dorms. I can recount countless cooking horror stories of dormmates that nearly burned the kitchen down. My personal favorite was cooking dry pasta without water. Re: bad actors, it isn't just destructive tendencies. It's mostly just being a mess and not doing dishes/ not cleaning up after you're done.
    - lotsofpulp 8y ago
      Not teaching children how to cook is a failure of parenting in my opinion. So much useful knowledge about chemistry, thermodynamics, nutrition, small motor skills using knives and whatnot. My parents made me shop with them, cook with them, clean with them, no reason by age 17 or 18 one wouldn’t be able to handle that themselves. They should have had 8 years of practice already.
      - swampthinker 8y ago
        I find 2nd generation immigrants in the US have cooking skills passed down from their parents, but most other students I wouldn't trust to boil water.
grawprog 8y ago
Or possibly outlets you could plug a hotplate(induction ones don't even get hot...they just heat the metal pan...so not even really a fire hazard unless you just leave it for hours...though they usually have shutdown timers these days....but i mean these are adults we're talking about here...), or a rice cooker or a microwave or an electric kettle into? There's lots of ways to make cheap easy food. I just don't understand you could be in college, have access to electricity and starve.... There are so many ways to cheaply feed yourself, even without a kitchen, that it seems like a self induced problem. If you can't afford the cafeteria food and you have no kitchen...how is the only other option just to starve???
- technofiend 8y ago
  When I went to school the dorms weren't wired for delivering that much amperage to every room. There were strict guidelines against high draw small appliances like hot plates and fridges.
  - grawprog 8y ago
    From the information I could find. A single hotplate draws as much power as a straightening iron, a portable heater, a toaster or a coffee maker. A mini fridge draws much less. A slow cooker, also a viable food preparation option, draws less than all of those even.
filoleg 8y ago
This varies wildly, i wouldnt make such broad statements. While not everyone might have had their own kitchen, every single dorm building (both legit dorms and “student apartments”) I’ve seen in the US had at least one kitchen in the building. More commonly, it was one per floor or one per 4-5 rooms.
hnuser355 8y ago
All my dorms did

xiphias2 8y ago

Another thing that's idiotic is that I can't even find ,,kitchen'' mentioned in the article about food on college campus. Without this top comment I wouldn't have understood the real problem. I mean why would I pay another company for breakfast when making an omlette with some vegetables is so easy?

swampthinker 8y ago

Fire hazards + only takes a few bad actors to ruin a kitchen. There also is there as much of a cooking culture in the US

kazen44 8y ago
Fire hazards are not a good enough reason to not have kitchens? US college students are adults right? Why would they not have any acces to a kitchen because of a possible fire hazard. In terms of 'bad actors' ruining a kitchen, that seems more like a social problem more then anything else. Breaking a kitchen also seems like a senseless idea, especially in a community of people you live with.
- swampthinker 8y ago
  US college students are young adults, 4 months removed from Highschool in most cases. They're also for the most part unsupervised in their dorms. I can recount countless cooking horror stories of dormmates that nearly burned the kitchen down. My personal favorite was cooking dry pasta without water. Re: bad actors, it isn't just destructive tendencies. It's mostly just being a mess and not doing dishes/ not cleaning up after you're done.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    Not teaching children how to cook is a failure of parenting in my opinion. So much useful knowledge about chemistry, thermodynamics, nutrition, small motor skills using knives and whatnot. My parents made me shop with them, cook with them, clean with them, no reason by age 17 or 18 one wouldn’t be able to handle that themselves. They should have had 8 years of practice already.
    - swampthinker 8y ago
      I find 2nd generation immigrants in the US have cooking skills passed down from their parents, but most other students I wouldn't trust to boil water.

grawprog 8y ago

Or possibly outlets you could plug a hotplate(induction ones don't even get hot...they just heat the metal pan...so not even really a fire hazard unless you just leave it for hours...though they usually have shutdown timers these days....but i mean these are adults we're talking about here...), or a rice cooker or a microwave or an electric kettle into? There's lots of ways to make cheap easy food. I just don't understand you could be in college, have access to electricity and starve.... There are so many ways to cheaply feed yourself, even without a kitchen, that it seems like a self induced problem. If you can't afford the cafeteria food and you have no kitchen...how is the only other option just to starve???

technofiend 8y ago
When I went to school the dorms weren't wired for delivering that much amperage to every room. There were strict guidelines against high draw small appliances like hot plates and fridges.
- grawprog 8y ago
  From the information I could find. A single hotplate draws as much power as a straightening iron, a portable heater, a toaster or a coffee maker. A mini fridge draws much less. A slow cooker, also a viable food preparation option, draws less than all of those even.

filoleg 8y ago

This varies wildly, i wouldnt make such broad statements. While not everyone might have had their own kitchen, every single dorm building (both legit dorms and “student apartments”) I’ve seen in the US had at least one kitchen in the building. More commonly, it was one per floor or one per 4-5 rooms.

hnuser355 8y ago

All my dorms did