FEED YOUR MIND: ‘LOVE A VEGETABLE’ EDITION

Class taught at Paladin Career and Technical High School (School year 2019/2020)

Why do we like and eat the food that we eat and what keeps us from making healthier choices for ourselves? What are basic nutrients? And why is it good to eat food in all the colors of a rainbow?

This month-long class was designed to convey basic nutrition knowledge and transfer this knowledge into practical cooking skills. Students committed to getting to know (and love) one vegetable and took on the task to make a healthy homemade version of a student favorite: Ramen noodles.

FEED YOUR MIND: ‘FLOUR POWER’ EDITION

Class taught at Paladin Career and Technical High School (School year 2019/2020)

Flour milled from cereal grains is the main ingredient in a lot of food we consume every day. Bread, biscuits, pancakes, pizza, cakes: flour opens many pathways for both thinking and baking.

This month-long class was designed to convey basic knowledge about staple foods and the processes involved to turn grains into flour. Students explored the history of three tasty baked goods and learned how to make them from scratch.

“WORLD’S BEST WORKFORCE” CATERING EXPERIENCE

Food Lab led at Paladin Career and Technical High School (School year 2019/2020)

Putting on a catering event is not an easy task. It requires a lot of planning and organizing in addition to making the food. 

Through baking bite-sized sweet treats for the “World’s Best Workforce Meeting”, students got to plan and execute a catering experience and explored a variety of skills such as event planning, customer service, communication, team work, and baking.

JAM SESSION

Workshop held at Augsburg University’s Food Lab in cooperation with the Physics and Chemistry Departments (2018)

Making jam is a fun way to learn about the science and history of food.

The workshop pursued the two-fold goal of learning about both the science and the history of jam. It combined a jam cooking session with a jam tasting and reflection session and sent students home with a jar of edible knowledge about a pantry staple.

POLITICS ON THE PLATE: HEALTHY EATING IN CONTEXT

Guest lecture held at St. Olaf College, Department of Nursing “Nutrition and Wellness” (2017)

Making healthy food choices is a challenge in today’s fast-paced world but food is more than just a matter of individual responsibility. The lecture highlighted the political dimension of food and how the discussion about healthy food choices needs to take the larger political, economic, and cultural contexts into consideration. It situated individual food choices in the broader food system context by looking at an example from each of the MyPlate food groups. 

BETWEEN SUSTAINABILITY, GOVERNANCE AND DEMOCRACY: INTERPRETING THE POLITICS OF FOOD

Panel co-organized with Basil Bornemann at the 11th Interpretative Policy Analysis Conference /University of Hull (2016)

The panel sought to investigate the politics of food across a diverse and complex array of food-related issues. While looking at different cases in their own right, the panel further aimed at aggregating findings and identifying patterns of food politics and politicization around the three meta-discourses of sustainability, governance, and democracy. Presentations highlighted the issues of food insecurity, urban agriculture, food waste, sustainable diets, and in-vitro meat.

SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT PRESCRIBE A VEGETARIAN DAY OF THE WEEK? A FRAMING ANALYSIS OF THE GERMAN “VEGGIE DAY” DEBATE.

Presentation given at the conference for the Sociology of Agriculture and Food/German Sociological Association, University of Applied Sciences Fulda/Germany (2015)

More than other types of food, meat has been at the center of current discussions about the ecological, social, environmental, and ethical critique of the industrialized food system. The presentation analyzed the proposal to introduce a vegetarian day in German public institutions and cafeterias and highlighted the arguments that came up when the proposal was discussed during the federal election campaign in 2013. It argued that the political discussion of food needs to go beyond the issue of meat consumption and look at how food habits and policies are embedded in a larger web of culture and policy.

FOOD AND POLITICAL SCIENCE: A MUTUALLY ENLIGHTENING RELATIONSHIP?

Lunch Talk held at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University (2015)

The issue of food is currently undergoing a pronounced process of politicization. Yet, despite there being broad agreement on the shortcomings of the global food system, pathways to fixing the way we eat are a lot less clear. While specialization within the discipline of political science incentivizes looking at individual food concerns, I argue that studying food as a holistic phenomenon cannot only help us learn a general lesson about the nature of politics and society in the 21st century but can also foster dialogue between political science’s subdisciplines by reengaging both normative and empirical political science in attending to food as one of the grand challenges of our time.

INTRODUCTION TO POLICY ANALYSIS: FOOD POLICY

Class taught at Leuphana University Lüneburg/Germany, BA Political Science (2014)

The class offered an introduction to the main concepts, frameworks, and methods of policy analysis using the example of food policy. Students applied approaches of policy analysis to analyze food policy issues relating to hunger and feeding the world, poverty and justice, environment and animal welfare, climate and energy, health and risk as well as security and social peace.