Teaching Kitchen course helps improve student food safety

One approach to addressing food insecurity at UC Berkeley is a course in personal food security and wellness, with a teaching kitchen component that brings lessons to life through knife skills, to "no-cook" cooking, microwave cooking and griddle cooking. . Photo by Jim Block

Co-operative extension researcher: Nutrition course a boon for UC Berkeley students

Students across the country are struggling to meet their basic dietary needs. In the University of California's 280,000 student system, 38% of undergraduates and 20% of graduate students report food insecurity.

As part of the UC Global Food Initiative, in 2015 the Nutrition Policy Institute (a UC research center on statewide agriculture and natural resources) identified the food insecurity as a system-wide problem at UC, prompting UC Regents and campuses to collectively address the issue. .

All 10 UC campuses now have on-site Basic Needs Centers, providing food, emergency housing, and support services. The UC system and campus workgroups recognize that meeting basic needs, such as food, is a multidimensional challenge.

In response to the 2022 White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health, which called for national efforts to reduce diet-related disease and food insecurity, UC renewed its commitment to halve the proportion of students facing food insecurity by 2030. Campuses will partner with local counties to maximize enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as CalFresh in California) , provide food to students who are not eligible for CalFresh, and allocate campus food resources to historically underserved student populations.

Evaluating the UC Berkeley course, Susana Matias, a cooperative extension specialist and researcher with the Nutrition Policy Institute, found a significant decrease in food insecurity among students. Photo by Jim Block

The NPI Collaborative researchers continue to monitor the impact of these efforts, in addition to other interventions, such as supporting students in learning basic cooking skills, to improve food security. A multi-pronged approach to tackling food insecurity at UC Berkeley is a 14-week personal food security and wellness course with an instructional cooking lab component.

Sarah Minkow, who teaches the Personal Food Security and Wellness course at UC Berkeley, explained that students learn about nutrition and gain cooking skills through the Cal Teaching Kitchen.

The program is designed with the time, cost and convenience of healthy eating in mind. Discussions focus on food safety, calculating nutrient needs, mindful eating and reading nutrition labels. The educational cooking lab brings lessons to life with knife techniques, "no-cook" cooking, microwave cooking and plate dishes.

Minkow enthusiastically highlighted the "overwhelmingly positive response [to] the lecture and the lab" from his students, suggesting the benefits of an interactive learning environment in driving student engagement.

“Students often say they wish this course was required for all UC Berkeley students,” Minkow said. She noted one barrier to reaching more students: the space capacity of the teaching kitchen.

Susana Matias, a cooperative extension specialist in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology at UC Berkeley and a collaborative researcher with the NPI, evaluated the impact of the course on personal food security and well-being at UC Berkeley.

Matias reported that increasing food literacy and cooking skills among students showed an increase in fruit and vegetable consumption...