Originally published in the Winter 2007 Lincoln Park Zoo magazine

The Nutrition Center is just another stop for the SYSCO food-services truck, which delivers to the North Pond Café and R.J. Grunts before making the short drive to Lincoln Park Zoo, where the same quality fruits and vegetables that diners get at those restaurants are dropped off for the gorillas, black bears and king penguins.

“The animals eat better than I do,” chuckles Veterinary Nutrition Manager Tawnia Zollinger, D.V.M. strolling the aisles of the Nutrition Center’s produce-refrigerator, which are stocked with asparagus, eggplant and star fruit. “I mean, I’ve never even eaten star fruit before.”

That exotic fruit is earmarked for the gorillas. Just as the Brazilian figs—at $30 a box—are purchased strictly for the hornbills during breeding season. But most of the other fruits, vegetables, meat, fish and small animals are served to multiple species at the zoo. And one look at the dozens of bins stuffed with a rainbow of produce hints at how much food is processed here. (The Nutrition Center handles more than 1,500 pounds of fruits and vegetables each week.)

Every animal at the zoo has its own diet, which Zollinger oversees, adjusting for, say, overweight individuals or those on medication whose nutritional requirements might have changed.

Every house at the zoo submits a daily requisition form to Zollinger, requesting foods they’ll need tomorrow. And each day, after a 7:30 a.m. delivery run to each house, the Nutrition Center staff prepares the following day’s deliveries.

A crate of oranges for the Pritzker Family Children’s Zoo? Check.
Fifteen pounds of herring for the Kovler Penguin/Seabird House? Check.
A dozen frozen rats for the Regenstein Bird of Prey Exhibit? Check.

The four-person staff at the Nutrition Center follow a system known as HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points), which decreases the risk of food contamination. Fruits and vegetables are prepared with green knives on green cutting boards at the south end of the massive food-prep table. Meats are sliced with red knives on red cutting boards and fish with brown knives and boards at the north end.

“Our methods of food storage and preparation are likely cleaner than those in most people’s homes,” says Zollinger. Like most people’s pantries, the foods follow the seasons. When apples are abundant (and cheap), as they are in late fall, the animals eat a lot of apples.

Unlike most home kitchens, the Nutrition Center houses industrial-size machinery, like the huge steamer used to make hard-boiled eggs for birds and bears. A saw hanging on a hook awaits large cuts of beef, while nearby a massive meat grinder is employed when making meat chow. And a stove is available for cooking pasta, which the sloth receive. (There is no slow cooker.)

A pantry room adjacent to the dock is crowded with pallets full of bagged kibble for everything from flamingos to wild dogs and shelves of dry goods such as spices (used as enrichment), Puppy Chow (given to young bears) and baby food (presented to sick animals). “We’re the grocery store for the whole zoo,” says Zollinger.

Like any grocery, the Nutrition Center has run out of merchandise. When a wallaby was struggling with a hairball recently, a Nutrition Center employee made an emergency trip to Whole Foods for a bottle of papaya juice, which breaks down the clumps.

Outside of patrons with hairballs, the zoo’s pantry hardly differs from the pantry at the upscale North Pond Café or R.J. Grunts, where keepers frequently eat. “Except,” adds Zollinger, “we have lizards, crickets and rats.”