Sustainable Ideas...

No longer just for agriculture departments, food studies is entering mainstream academia. As The Washington Post reported, Yale, Boston University, and New York University all offer food studies programs, and others, including the University of New Hampshire and the University of California at Davis are starting them. At Yale, the number of food-related courses has increased almost 50 percent over the last five years.  

Among the courses you can take in departments from English to economics are “Cultural Foods: Geography of Food and Wine,” “Cooking Up a Storm: Exploring Food in American Culture,” and Yale’s “Psychology, Biology, and Politics of Food.” And you’ll find more than papers and final exams on the syllabus, students observe in restaurants, learn how to make their own dishes, and analyze everything from competitive eating to food memoirs.

Driving the trend is the expanding awareness of food and the environmental implications, the absolute boom in popular food literature (Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser are among the oft-cited), and an acceptance of food as something to be studied and young professors who want to study it. All this makes me want to go back to school—which food course would you most like to take?

Photo from Flickr.