Take a break on Wednesday evening (May 3) and join us first at Labyrinth Books for a ramen noodle-making demonstration by Chef Frank Caponi (6-7:15ish) and then saunter on over to the Garden Theater for a showing of the food classic, “Tampopo,” at 7:30. In preparation, a review of the film.

Thanks to Pat Tanner for her piece in the Princeton Echo on our February conference, Changing Climate, Changing Appetites! And thanks to all who worked and came together to create such a successful conference, especially Eliza Wright ’19, Daniel Shepard ’19, Madelynn Prendergast ’19, Rozalie Czesana ’18, Caroline Savage and Gina Talt from Sustainability, Chuck Crosby at WWS, everyone at PEI and of course funders Gordon Douglas MD ’55 and Sheila Mahoney S’55.
From the piece: As you will see, my correspondents differ one from another in what they took away from the full range of panels and panelists. But almost everyone mentioned one of the most unexpected and unique aspects of the conference: lunch! The conference organizers had partnered with chef Jerry Luz of the campus dining department to produce a “lunch-and-learn” menu that reflected and provided information on some of the key agricultural and environmental issues surrounding food production and consumption that were under discussion.

The most innovative aspect was a tasting of four kinds of meatballs. We attendees were asked to fill our plates with those and other options from a buffet outside the auditorium and then return to our seats to consume it. The menu focused on plant-forward dishes like hummus, quinoa, roasted vegetables, and fruit salad, but also included the bite-size meatballs. We then took an instant survey using our smartphones to rank the meatballs. The choices were all-beef, beef with whole grain, all-bean and vegetable (vegan), and salmon. Interestingly, beef with whole grain was the crowd favorite and served to reinforce the point that it doesn’t have to be onerous to make small but impactful changes in diet and eating patterns.

For Karla Cook, co-founder and coordinator of Princeton Studies Food (as well as founder of Princeton School Gardens Co-op), the lunch-and-learn was the most profound part of the conference she helped organize. The concept for the lunch, she writes, “grew out of Professor Dan Rubenstein’s idea to have our lunch match principles of the WRI report co-authored by Tim Searchinger.” Both men are lecturers at Princeton, and both were participants in the first panel of the day, “Framing the Challenge.”

Three student members of our council – Madelynn Prendergast ’19, Daniel Shepard ’19 and Eliza Wright ’19, are partnering with Karla Cook, longtime food journalist, nonprofit founder and strategist — and a co-founder of Princeton Studies Food — to conceptualize an entrepreneurial food label and dynamic app that goes beyond nutrition information to include societal and environmental impact.
As a beginning, students researched and reported water use, greenhouse gas emissions and land use of three main ingredients in the Princeton Studies Lunch menu: chickpeas (in Hummus), beets (in Roasted Roots) and lentils (in Megadarra).They presented their posters at the Changing Climate, Changing Appetites conference on Feb 17.
Cook provided nutrition analysis of the three recipes, supermarket cost per serving and a rough look at planning/culture shift/pantry revisions required for making the switch to more plant-based foods. At the conference, Wright conducted a short survey about expanded labeling.
For presentation of data on the three posters that were presented for the conference, the team began by adapting a Swiss pie chart/spider web design but is continuing work with Sheila Pontis, a lecturer at PU who specializes in the presentation of complex information, with other interested faculty, scholars and students and with Smith+Manning, a design and branding firm.