What's in your food? Where did it come from? Why should you care? Animal and Avian Sciences lecturer Charlie Apter wants you to get a taste for the facts.
Next month, he's introducing a class called "Eating with Eyes Wide Open," where students will tackle food challenges such as eliminating sugar or meat from their diets, eating only fast food or subsisting only on food they make from scratch. They'll keep a food diary about their successes or struggles and will attend weekly demonstrations of cheesemaking, canning and more.
Part of the new general education curriculum's I-Series of courses addressing big-picture issues, it will also explore topics like the environmental and health consequences of the way we eat, including greenhouse gas emissions and widespread obesity, as well as how the processed-food industry manipulates its fatty, sugary and salty products to encourage people to eat them.
"We tend to take the shortest route to satisfy hunger," Apter (left) says. But we should be aware that "food isn't just something you take off the shelf at the supermarket. I want them to see eating as part of a larger system, not something completely isolated."
For everyone, not just his students, he recommends eating locally, whenever possible, and buying in season. Visit farmer's markets, he says, but make sure you're not buying from re-sellers, who might be trucking in produce from far away. Read the signs in front of produce displays at supermarkets, which may indicate where the peaches and beans are sourced. Participate in community-supported agriculture, where you can sign up to get regularly scheduled baskets of locally grown produce in season.
"We expect to see everything in the store all the time, but we need to get away from that mentality," he says. Though he admits, "I'm guilty of buying grapes in the store in January sometimes, just because it's cheap."
That means he understands the limits, due to time or money, that can keep people from following his recommendations. His main goal is to simply raise awareness of the tradeoffs and consequences, and for people to make educated decisions.
To increase his own awareness, he's taking on his own challenge during this semester: being a vegan. "It's not fair to ask the students to do things I wouldn't do myself," he says.
Feast Your Eyes
To learn more, Apter recommends reading the following:
- "Food Rules"
by Michael Pollan - "Hot, Flat and Crowded"
by Thomas L. Friedman - "The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food"
by Michael Moss - "Biological Diversity, Agriculture, and the Liberal Arts"
by David Orr
