I changed my original idea of using a dining hall to instead using a grocery store, in this case Target. The main idea of the game has stayed the same, though: make a number of calories with as few items as possible.
The goal of the game now is specifically to gather as few items as possible to make at least 1000 total calories.
Each player or team is given 4 minutes to go through the store and find their items. Players are not allowed to use food items that could be qualified as desserts (cakes, cookies, ice cream, etc). If a player does not make it back to the designated area in 4 minutes, the other player gets to select an item from the late player’s basket at random and remove it from the counting. If both players get back in time and have the same number of items and got at least 1000 calories, then whoever is closer to 1000 (i.e. has fewer calories) is the winner. The loser must then buy the winner a grocery item up to $10 (or whatever is financially feasible for that person at the time). All food items that are not being purchased must be put back. Isaac won this round because my items added up to 1,230 calories while his only added up to 1,090.
The point of this piece/game is to show how much food bought at stores ends up getting wasted due to over-buying and negligence. Many food items purchased at grocery stores end up going bad in refrigerators, and this game is meant to show how people could much more efficiently plan out their food purchases based on necessary calories and nutritional value if they paid more attention to calorie count and expiration dates.
