An estimated 30 U.S. colleges and universities “have formal interdisciplinary food studies programs that offer degrees or minors,” says the Los Angeles Times. “New ones opened this fall at UC-Berkeley, the University of the Pacific and Syracuse University.” And hundreds of other colleges are seeing “food-focused interest” in the traditional fields in agriculture, nutrition and environment. At Berkeley, business major Charlie James is minoring in food systems. He told the newspaper that he wants to make healthy food more accessible and affordable.
Food culture is now “a legitimate” topic for scholarship, and schools use such programs to gain status and attract tuition-paying students, professor Krishnendu Ray of New York University told the Times. NYU has one of the nation’s oldest master’s degree programs in food studies. The three-year-old Berkeley Food Institute on the UC campus “brings together scholars and speakers on scientific and policy research,” says the newspaper. “That work was bolstered last year when the UC system launched the UC Global Food Initiative, which draws together and funds food scholarship in agriculture, medicine, nutrition, climate science, social science and the humanities.”