Earlier this year I was contacted by Dr. Tracy Slagter, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Slagter told me she was starting a brand new course on food politics — and my blog was going to be part of her students’ required reading. (!) I asked Slagter to stay in touch and let me know how her new course was received.
A few days ago I received this lovely email. I found it so inspiring and hopeful that I asked for Slagter’s permission to share it with you.
What would our food system and society look like if all high school or college students received this sort of education?
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Dear Bettina,
Happy summer! I’ve been meaning to email you for several weeks since the semester ended, but am only getting to it now. I originally emailed you in February to tell you how much your blog inspired my teaching at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and now that the course is over I wanted to share a few things with you that might interest you from my “Politics of Food” class.
First, the course was better than I could have imagined. College students can be a bit tricky to motivate on issues that they don’t feel are directly related to their lives, but after a few weeks of going through the political influence of the food industry and making them write about the lobbying money behind their favorite snacks, I think they understood where the class was headed and how it impacted them. Since they didn’t know a lot about politics going in, I think the course took them by surprise: they didn’t realize that politics and food were so connected. It was fun to see the lightbulbs go on!
Second, as part of the course students were required to spend time working with local schools and child care centers or at our local community pantry. About half of my 45 students worked in the pantry, which was quite an education about SNAP, food waste, childhood hunger, and poverty. The other half worked on helping local schools and child care centers educate young children about the importance of healthy choices, and they had lots of fun creating healthy snacks with preschool children. A handful of students also worked to put on a new event for our community, the “Cookin’ It Fresh” school lunch challenge. Some of my students worked with high school teams and local chefs to create healthy and delicious items that met the NSLP requirements and could be produced for under $1.00/meal. They discovered how difficult a task it was working in a school kitchen on such a tight budget, trying to cater to a wide variety of tastes. (The healthy walking taco was the winner! Bed of tortilla chips, black beans, brown rice, lots of spices, shredded chicken, and shredded carrots in place of cheese. It was really good!)
Finally, the last project for the course asked students to think about the long-term sustainability of the U.S. food system. The course had a focus on sustainability — it was the concept that anchored the course, and sustainability is part of our general education program here (the University Studies Program). The last part of the project asked students to reflect on their experiences in course and with their community partners. Here’s a link to one of my favorites. (This was shared with the student’s permission.) This student and I are going to undertake a collaborative research project this fall related to food politics, but we’re not sure of our exact focus yet. (Any suggestions?!)
Anyway, I thought you would enjoy hearing about these things. I am still a devoted reader of your blog and learn so much from it! Again, thank you for the excellent work that you do, and for your passion in doing it.
Warm wishes,
Tracy Slagter
Associate Professor, Political Science
Interim Director, University Studies Program
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
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Bettina Elias Siegel says
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Kelly says
Would Dr. Slagter mind sharing a list of materials she had her students read for the class? I think that would be of interest to others (including myself) who don’t have the opportunity to take her class.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
I’ll ask her!
Martha says
LOVE this and that course should be required for general public education….so many have no idea how the system works. Thanks so much to both of you for what you do. That reading list mentioned above would be wonderful.
Tracy Slagter says
Thanks for the support! This class was so fun to teach — it was a pleasure every day (well… except that one day when no one did the reading and I had to lay down the law a bit…!).
The syllabus includes a healthy dose of Marion Nestle (“Food Politics” is the primary textbook for the first half of the semester, and we referred to it throughout the course because it’s brilliant) and Janet Poppendieck (“Free for All: Fixing School Food in America” is the primary text for the second half of the semester). They also read some great stuff on sustainability, including selections from Frederick Kaufman’s “Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food.” In my lectures, I used a LOT of Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, mostly because I felt like it was important to introduce students to some of the very public writers about food and politics, and I threw in several of Bittman’s NY Times posts as they appeared as well. I wanted them to feel like they were slowly becoming part of a much larger, much more complicated national/global conversation, and to be able to hold their own without feeling like they were in over their heads.
I also wanted them to read food politics blogs, mostly Bettina’s! I excerpted some of Bettina’s coverage of big stories (the Sid Miller story in particular) for exams, and we spent 5-10 minutes talking about “food in the news” before most class periods. Marion Nestle’s blog was another, and MarlerBlog as well. I had to be really selective, because if I assigned too much, it would have been difficult for them to do close reading and keep up with their other courses.
Next time I teach this I think I’m going to require them to watch a few of the excellent documentaries out there. We did watch part of “Weight of the Nation,” and also “Fed Up.” But there are so many good ones out there!
What was most important to me was to get them hooked on this issue, and to see it as important no matter what their major was. My students were mostly sophomores, and only one of the students was a political science major. I just wanted them to be AWARE of the money and politics that are always lurking under the wrappers of their favorite foods, under the sneeze guards of their old high school cafeterias, and in the plastic bottles of soda and fruit juice they carry in their backpacks. (One of them told me the MOST valuable thing she learned was that 4g sugar = 1 tsp. She said it changed the way she eats. Such a small fact, but so powerful…)
I could talk about this for days. There are many things I would change about the course for next time — hopefully I’ll get the chance to teach it again soon. HUGE, HUGE, HUGE thanks to people like Bettina and Marion Nestle for keeping these issues on our collective radar in such an engaging way!
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Thank you, Tracy, for sharing all of this with my readers! This sounds like such a wonderful class – one I would happily audit or take online, and from which I’m sure I could learn so much. (And I’m still reeling from the idea that anything I’ve ever written is being assigned in a college class – unreal.) 🙂
Kelly says
Thanks, Dr. Slagter, for the list (and Bettina for asking)! I’ve read Marion’s book, and now I’m looking forward to reading the other items on the list this summer.
Now, wouldn’t it be wonderful if these kinds of materials could be part of the curriculum in nutrition classes and medical schools? Based on my experience with the former, they’re not, and I’ve always heard that doctors receive little, if any, nutrition training in medical school.