Starting in June, our summer community workday hours will be every Sunday and Thursday from 6-8:30pm. Throughout the summer, volunteers will be planting, harvesting, weeding and working on small construction projects. Everyone is welcome, including children and those without any background in farming or gardening. It’s a great opportunity to learn how food is grown, meet others from the Duke community who are interested in food, and spend some time outside. Carpooling is available, please email dukecampusfarm@gmail.com to request a ride. The Duke Campus Farm is located at 4910 Friends School Rd in Durham, directly across the street from Carolina Friends School in the Duke Forest. For more information: www.farm.duke.edu.

Think fast – when I say smoothies what places come to mind – Alpine Atrium, McDonalds or Quenchers? If Quenchers, you might visualize the shelves filled with energy bars, or imagine the sound of the Vitamix making a protein shake or snacking from the fresh fruit bar. All of these options seem pretty good for a healthy snack, but you’ve often wondered about those smoothies are they really that healthy? Read the rest of this entry »

Find below a list of food related courses offered at Duke in Fall 2012. For a more complete list of food related courses offered at Duke, visit the Academics page.

Fall 2012 – Food Related Courses at Duke

AAAS  890S Food Race and You
BIOLOGY  158 Plants and Human Use
BIOLOGY 228 How Plants Feed and Fuel the World (Cross listed with ENVIRON 228)
COMMFAM  221C-23 Practical Clinical Nutrition (Open to select students)
CULANTH 258S Our Culinary Cultures (Cross listed with DOCST 344S)
ENVIRON  590-10 Intro to Sustainable Food Systems
EVANTH  355 Food for Thought
MEDREN 390-05 Medieval Appetites: Sex & Food (Cross listed with WOMENST 290-05)
WRITING 101 – 66, 67, 68 Science of Food Choice

If you know of a food-related course offered in Fall 2012 at Duke that should be added to this list, e-mail sustainability@duke.edu.

It’s known as the sunshine vitamin because we get most of the D we need when our skin is consistently exposed to UVB rays from the sun for 15 minutes every day. We need to do this since not many foods contain adequate amounts of vitamin D unless they are fortified.

Ok so if our bodies are designed to make this vitamin why is it that we are seeing inadequate vitamin D levels worldwide? Read the rest of this entry »

Genetically modified or genetically engineered (GE) crops have been around since the mid-90’s, and still there’s a veil of uncertainty around them. What do you know about them? And why are we writing about the now?

Recently Whole Foods has come under scrutiny for carrying products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs ). Whole Foods is one of the biggest suppliers of organic foods – the issue? By definition, organic foods can’t contain GMOs. The problem is GMOs are now so ubiquitous in our foods supply Whole Foods hasn’t been able to avoid keeping such products (including big names such as Boca Burgers and Kashi) in stock. Part of the reason is labeling – or lack thereof.  The U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations that does not require such labeling or testing. Read the rest of this entry »