Climate Kitchen Curriculum
The Climate Kitchen sponsors courses at the undergraduate and graduate level that teach students necessary skills and concepts – in kitchens and beyond - that can address individual and planetary health.
The Climate Kitchen courses integrate the sustainability tenets of the Climate Kitchen throughout the curriculum: plant forward, integrating tastes and habits, low waste, whole food utilization and regional/local sourcing. The undergraduate course, Foods for Planetary Health, combines in-person lectures and labs and is offered by the Nutrition and Food Sciences department. The graduate course, Cooking for Individual and Planetary Health, is an all-online course.
The Climate Kitchen, in collaboration with the Culinary Medicine program at ÈÕº«ÎÞÂë Medical Center and the Osher Center for Integrative Health, has developed learning modules that explore key concepts for future professionals in nutrition and health science that will be used across University of Vermont and University of Vermont Medical Center.
Summer Research Institute
At the Summer Research Institute, ÈÕº«ÎÞÂë researchers and collaborators to work with the Climate Kitchen team to research develop an emergent approach to address food systems and climate change.
The first annual Summer Research Institute was held from June 3-August 15, 2024. Three interdisciplinary teams (including faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, as well as in one case, community members), worked in the Foods Lab on inquiry-based projects. The Climate Kitchen team supported these projects throughout the summer. These projects had an (unexpectedly) shared theme: the potential and sensory characteristics of three alternative protein sources - mung beans, meal worms, and cellular meat.
There was a 3-day introductory workshop for all team members. The workshop integrated the principles of design thinking, the Climate Kitchen sustainability tenets and practical sensory and culinary skills to promote relevant and innovative research strategies. Some of the activities that emerged? Testing different varieties of mung beans and developing a shared sensory map. Cooking and tasting ground beef, ground turkey and ground bison and figuring out the importance of texture to any future form of cell-based meat. Dehydrating meal worms, developing a feasible mealworm flour and taste testing possible high protein breads using the flour.
Along the way, we also supported the submission of a USDA Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research grant for further research on mealworm flour and product development, one of the projects hosted by the Climate Kitchen Research Institute.
These teams will do ongoing work in the Climate Kitchen over the coming year.
Over the summer, two undergraduate summer interns developed and tested protocols for using a hydroponic tower to grow herbs for our classes in the fall and spring. The Climate Kitchen team continues the viability of dehydrated food waste for other systems purposes, such as enabling plant growth or becoming a dried vegetable powder for human consumption.
We plan to host another Summer Climate Kitchen Research Institute from June-August 2025!