HALIFAX, NS— ‘Soup of the Day’ becomes more like soup of the century for Dalhousie University dining halls after numerous complaints about taste and illnesses have exposed them for non-stop brewing and serving the same stew since the mid-1970s.
“We’re referring to the concoction as ‘perpetual stew’ because it has been continuously cooking since it was started in 1974,” said leading investigator Stewart Gordon of the Nova Scotia Department of Food Protection. “The continuous heat suggests why students weren’t getting suspiciously ill and this went unnoticed for so long—it was just being passed off as bad dining hall food.”
Initial reports state that they’ve found not only food relics from the past five decades but also other ingredients that are now out of date.
“We’re led to believe dining hall staff were just throwing random shit in there everyday to keep it at a consistent volume,” said Gordon. “We’ve found your classic culinary staples, like bologna, jello salad, a lot of mayonnaise-based dishes, but also some chemicals like DDT and asbestos that really show the stew’s age. We’ll also have to do more testing on this but we’re pretty sure we’ve found the remains of several now-extinct animals.”
With so many hazardous factors at play, the stew has attracted the interest of almost every department of Dalhousie, which are now fighting over who gets jurisdiction to study the stew.
“Medical students are obviously concerned, biology students see it as an ecosystem, history students as a time capsule, chemistry sees it as a unique chemical reaction, business sees it as a case study for cutting expenses, witchcraft students at King’s think it’s a potion… the list goes on and on,” said Gordon. “Almost every department thinks they have a rightful claim.. Computer science has their hat in the ring, but they have very little to do with this… they just want to be included.”
Although Dalhousie is under fire from the authorities, rumours are circulating amongst the student body that a new stew has been started. Though many are left frightened for the health and safety of students, a large majority of observers are fascinated by the many intellectual, historical and scientific mysteries the perpetual stew may hold, with many looking forward to seeing what future historical events the new stew may live through.
By Lauren Sooksom