Just when you thought your dining experience couldn't get any worse, HFS has managed to find a way to take it to a whole new level. Enter the era of wooden utensils.

At the beginning of the year, students were unpleasantly surprised by the replacement of our plastic eating tools with new eco-friendly corn-ware. With all the boasts of the new product being biodegradable and earth friendly, students were eager to accept the new change.

But upon discovering the wicked-witch-of-the-west melting act that occurs when any amount of heat is applied to the instruments, most of us students were in a collective chant to get our plastic back.

Wanting to maintain a green outlook on the situation while still appeasing the hungry masses, HFS finally presented their answer to this sinking situation — utensils made from birch wood.

That's right: wooden utensils.

When I first saw them sticking out of the fork bin, I mistook them for doctors' office tongue depressors.

The fork is really more of a sad cousin of the spork, with prongs so dull it makes an organic chemistry lecture seem riveting. The knife couldn't cut through melting ice cream, and the spoon has a curvature of almost 0 degrees.

My friends were convinced that this was some HFS joke for Halloween, but the signs describing the newest addition to the dining house of horrors revealed that it was in fact a serious attempt at appeasing our eating woes.

Aside from the simple fact that it is nearly impossible to eat with these prehistoric tools, the idea behind them seems rather hypocritical. The main reason for abolishing our plastic roots is to use utensils that are compostable.

This would allow us to decrease the amount that we contribute to landfills. The landfills use land that could be used to grow trees that are beautiful and give us clean, unpolluted air. Thus, the environment is saved and we all live happily ever after.

But when we are using utensils that require us to cut down those very same trees that we are trying to protect, isn't the effort a wee bit counter-productive?

This, coupled with the blatant fact that the utensils are useless when attempting to eat, makes the addition even worse than the previous corn-made mistake.

I never really thought anything would make me miss having a spoon that dissolves at just the sight of chicken noodle soup, but when the alternative choice is a nasty case of oral splinters, I can't help but gravitate toward what has become the lesser of two evils.

But maybe this was the plan of HFS all along. Maybe the idea was not to keep the wooden utensils long term, but more to scare us into appreciating the melting utensils that we took for granted.

By showing us just how bad it can really be, HFS has allowed us to embrace our flaccid forks with a newfound respect and admiration that we never thought possible before.

However, this euphoric glee diminishes when I come back to my room and tackle a can of Spaghetti-O's with a Diamond brand super strong plastic spoon that doesn't bend with the warmed sustenance, yet still has enough depth to contain a mouthful-size portion of the Campbell's made goodness.

Plastic is simply the best option when it comes to collegiate dining. We are busy people with big appetites. We don't want to spend valuable cerebral efforts on thinking up ways to reinforce our spoon; we simply want to consume our food quickly and without worry.

The efforts to save our melting planet should be focused on areas that produce much higher waste than the minor amount that plastic utensils produce.

Until a plastic-mimicking, foolproof, biodegradable fork is produced, the sanctity of our food-time should be left untouched by the environment police. When that day comes, we shall welcome it with open arms. But until that time, please, give us our plastic implements back, and let us eat in peace.

[Reach columnist Jeff Dickson at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]