Food for Thought: Engaging the Citizen in the Science and Politics of Food Information, Food Consumerism, Nutrition and Health

Sally A. Wasileski, Department of Chemistry, David Clarke, Department of Biology, Karin E. Peterson, Department of Sociology, Amy Joy Lanou, Department of Health and Wellness, Leah G. Mathews, Department of Economics.

The University of North Carolina at Asheville (UNCA) has adopted an Integrative Liberal Studies (ILS) curriculum in which students take their general education distribution in natural science, social science, and humanities or arts in topical clusters centered on a common civic question. The Food for Thought cluster focuses on the intersection of science and policy by exploring the role of food in chemical, biological, and social systems. Its aims to help the student become an informed consumer of food by providing a platform for discussion of what we eat, why we eat, where our food comes from and how it is processed, and how food affects our bodies and health.

Students enroll in various Food for Thought cluster courses throughout their undergraduate career and each course has specific learning goals related to both the individual discipline and the mission of the cluster. Courses in this cluster draw from Chemistry, Biology, Nutrition, Economics and Sociology and include HWP 373 Food Politics and Nutrition Policy, CHEM 174 Live Learn and Eat: the Food of Chemistry, and ECON 245 Land Economics: Connecting Land and People. Students in any single course will contribute class content to students in another course, a strategy that enables students to gain an appreciation of specialized knowledge, while also recognizing the limits of any single discipline for solving complex problems. All of the cluster courses draw on a range of pedagogies, both traditional and innovative, including lectures and literature reviews, group projects, field trips, peer-led learning, poster presentations, laboratory experiments, and independent research.