Note: this writeup has been researched primarily at the cafeterias of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Other cafeterias may or may not follow the same laws.

The Laws of Cafeteria Dining

1. Meat, if present, will not be recognizable as such by either visual observation or taste. Instead, it will usually appear to be semi-cohesive lumps of vegetable protein (i.e. tofu or beans, depending on meat type). Taste of this "meat" varies between that of pure, low-quality bacon grease and diced cardboard, with any number of intermediate steps possible.

2. To get around the difficulty of identification, meat-based dishes will invariably bear labels. These labels frequently contain misleading adjectives relating to the quality of the dish (i.e. "Savory Meatloaf"), and may or may not be missing or misplaced, according to the same laws that govern pens, socks, and compact disks.

3. While vegetarian meals are almost always possible, they are invariably of even lower quality than their non-vegetarian equivalents. This goes doubly for vegan dishes.

4. Dishes, trays, glasses (if present; see point 5), and silverware will all be wet. Temperature varies randomly from near-arctic cold to extremely hot, and bears no apparent relation to the temperature of the surrounding air, food, or other containers.

5. Glasses will frequently be absent. If clear plastic glasses are not present, there is a chance that they will be replaced by small paper cups of roughly 1/2 cup capacity.

6. Of 10 varieties of soda, 5 will be flat. There is no way to predict which ones.

7. Salad bars, although extensive, will usually contain large numbers of apparently useless items, such as ketchup, four varieties of ranch dressing, and numerous obscure Asian vegetables.

8. Pizza isn't.

9. The relative quality of a given item is inversely proportional to the difficulty involved in making it. For example, a cafeteria omelette may taste nearly identical to an ordinary omelette, but simple scrambled eggs will always be inedible.

10. Ethnic foods, presumably in an attempt to appear politically correct, will always make up at least 2/3 of the total food mass in a given cafeteria. However, these will usually appear strikingly similar to analogous European foods.