In the movie Animal House, one of the most memorable scenes involves John Belushi sliding his food tray along the lunch buffet in the school cafeteria and piling layers of food on top of it.

Belushi packs his tray until it’s overflowing with every item he can get his grubby hands on including bananas, donuts and burgers. Then once his tray is overflowing, he stuffs his pockets with more food and finally, after a quick glance over his shoulder, slurps Jello right off the plate. No matter how many times I watch this scene, I still think it’s funny.

How things have changed — we are in a different era now where students are more health conscious and schools ban unhealthy food options. And now there’s a growing movement where cafeterias are going tray-less. Why are schools dropping their trays?

• Ditching diner trays means ditching the tons of plastic used in making them
• Eliminates the needs to waste gallons of water to wash them clean!
• Less food is wasted when you can’t just grab-and-go. Say goodbye to the “my eyes are bigger than my stomach” excuse.

Seems like going tray-less has a lot of upside to schools. The downside? Without trays, the scene from Animal House can’t be reenacted — I mean can you imagine a high school student willing to carry a surplus of dishes? And it’s likely you will never hear the words “food fiiight!” again.