Teaching

Food and Health (11:400:104), undergraduate, 3 credits

This course is designed to elucidate the link between nutrition and health by way of food, food components and nutraceuticals. This course will enable students to take a critical look at what they eat and give them a new perspective on how food affects them and their body. Students will gain a basic understanding about the biochemistry of food and learn that food components (i.e. macromolecules) are similar to those that constitute their body. They will learn how malnutrition (under- and over-nutrition and/or simply an unbalanced or inappropriate diet) affects health. The major chronic diseases influenced by diet will be discussed. Finally, students will take a closer look at their personal dietary intake and have the chance to learn how to improve their dietary habits, if necessary.

Learning objectives:

At the conclusion of this course, students will be able to:
1. Understand and apply basic principles and concepts in the physical or biological sciences
2. Explain and be able to assess the relationship among assumptions, method, evidence, arguments, and theory in scientific analysis.

Food Biology Fundamentals (16:400:514, graduate, 3 credits)

The course is one of three core courses for students enrolled in graduate studies in the Graduate Program in Food Science. I co-teach this course with other colleagues from the Department of Food Science. The topics covered under this course span from microbiology to concepts of food safety, nutritional biochemistry and biotechnology. I teach a section on the use of genetically modified mouse models to study the metabolism of nutrients.