March is National Nutrition Month. And as the general rules of nutrition keep changing, students are mentally tuning out. Here, Chef Weiner explains how to emphasize the first four of 10 unchanging basic facts.

By Adam Weiner, CFSE

Culinary teachers at all levels tend to be uncomfortable teaching nutrition because:

• we are expected to be experts in the field, but have spent very little time being trained about nutrition,

• when we started cooking, “healthy food” was basically food that people wouldn’t want to cook or eat, our students have heard so much about nutrition and obesity they mentally turn off when we start talking about “healthy,” and
• most importantly, THE RULES KEEP CHANGING. Just when I figured out how to use a “pyramid” they switched me to a “plate.”

The Pork Checkoff honors 2011 Pork Industry Environmental Stewards

The National Pork Board honored four farm families as recipients of the 2011 Pork Industry Environmental Stewards Award at the annual National Pork Industry Forum recently held in Denver. The award, now in its 18th year, recognizes producers who demonstrate a firm commitment to safeguarding the environment and their local communities.

The 2011 award recipients are:

Golden Circle Pork, Woodward, Iowa
Rod and Missy Bice produce 6,600 wean-to-finish pigs annually on their farm set amid 1,400 acres of corn and soybeans. They and their children continue the farming tradition that began more than a century ago by both sides of the family. The Bices were also named Environmental Stewards for Iowa in 2010.

An e-learning module focusing on the importance of soy sauce as a flavor-enhancer not limited to Asian-style dishes.

Courtesy of CIAprochef.com

These days, big flavor is big news. From Asian to Latin to Mediterranean cuisine, Americans crave intense, authentic flavors. And chefs are looking for new ways—and rediscovering old ways—to enhance flavors and bring depth to their dishes by adding umami, the “fifth taste.”

Naturally brewed Kikkoman Soy Sauce—one of the most umami-enriched ingredients—is a pantry staple and a fixture on Asian tables, and a condiment most of us know as well as salt and pepper. In fact, it’s so familiar today that it hardly seems foreign.

But how much do your students really know about this ancient Asian sauce?

Since its opening last spring, the Miami Culinary Institute (MCI) at Miami Dade College (MDC) has made an immediate impact on the community and beyond with a cornucopia of programs and activities that please the palate whether one is a student, food enthusiast or culinary-industry professional. Last autumn, the Institute turned up the heat with the opening of its rooftop restaurant, Tuyo, an exquisite fusion of New World cuisine under the direction of award-winning chef Norman Van Aken.

“This is a momentous occasion for the college and the Florida culinary scene,” says college president Dr. Eduardo J. Padrón. “We set out to be revolutionary with the MCI, and Tuyo is a key ingredient in carrying out this vision.”

Certified Master Chef and culinary industry veteran Brad Barnes ('87), CMC, CCA, AAC, has been named senior director of continuing education at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA).

Barnes previously served as senior director of culinary education at the CIA, where he helped restructure the associate-degree programs and played an integral part in the development and implementation of the new CIA Academic Delivery System.

Working from the school’s Hyde Park, N.Y., campus, Barnes will introduce innovations to the existing three-part curriculum in the department: Food Enthusiast classes, including Culinary Boot Camps and weekend classes; the ProChef® Certification program; and CIA Consulting, which offers creative marketing and menu solutions to the industry.

The Kendall College Board of Directors has named Emily Williams Knight president of Kendall College. Knight brings more than 15 years of experience in the education and hospitality industry to her role at Kendall College. Dr. Karen Gersten, who served as president of Kendall College since 2010, has been named Vice President of Academic Affairs in the Institutional Quality and Integrity Unit of the Global Products and Services Group at Laureate Education, Inc.

Knight joined Laureate Education, Inc., in 2011 as a vice president responsible for globally expanding access to the company’s hospitality-management, culinary-arts and art-and-design programs. She previously was the CEO of New England University LLC. Knight formerly worked at Pearson Education for more than 10 years, most recently serving as vice president of marketing and sales strategies for Pearson Teacher Education and Development.

Certified Master Chef® (CMC®) Ronald DeSantis, AAC®, CHE, of Staatsburg, N.Y., began his two-year term as chair of the American Culinary Federation, Inc. (ACF) Certification Commission at the group’s bi-annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., Jan. 13-14. DeSantis, director of culinary excellence and quality assurance for Yale Dining at Yale University, New Haven, Conn., says he and the commission’s 16 other current members will focus on increasing the awareness and credibility of ACF certification.

“My vision for the commission is to develop and project the message of certification relevance beyond ACF,” DeSantis said. “Members know certification’s value and importance. We need to make the dining public and foodservice employers aware of the value of certified chefs.”

ACF certification is based on education, experience and completion of official coursework and exams. ACF certification credentials distinguish culinary professionals as leaders in the culinary field, and demonstrate skill and expertise to peers and potential employers. Currently, more than 11,500 professionals hold ACF certification.

When the state-of-the-art, 60,000-square-foot Culinary & Hospitality Center opened on the College of DuPage campus in Glen Ellyn, Ill., just west of Chicago in October 2011, culinary-arts and hospitality students got a bonus: a fine-dining restaurant and boutique hotel. The Waterleaf Restaurant, serving lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch, and six-room Inn at Water’s Edge give students in the college’s Culinary Arts and Hospitality program the opportunity to gain real-life experience working alongside professionals.

Guests of the inn discover the comforts of a world-class boutique hotel: from the eco-friendly design and the French doors overlooking a pond surrounded by a lavishly manicured landscape to the vaulted ceilings that allow the room to fill with natural light.

Other amenities include luxurious bathroom touches, wireless Internet, a flat-screen TV and more. Services include private keyed access to the hotel floor and rooms, a concierge lounge serving Continental breakfast daily, bell staff offering luggage assistance, in-room dining service for lunch and dinner available through Waterleaf, and special touches like a nightly turndown service. Nightly rates range from a reasonable $99 to $129. The inn allows College of DuPage students to complete hands-on training in all service areas.

A student club at The Culinary Institute of America serves to enlighten and call to action on global social issues.

By Fareez Dossani

What an exciting time to be a part of the hospitality industry! Chefs are revolutionizing the way the entire world is eating. Never have we, as a society, been so conscious of our food. It’s great that Americans are beginning to question where there food is coming from, but we must become more well-informed and ask if the food we purchase is fairly traded.

The local food movement has made great strides in reducing carbon footprints and teaching civil society to take advantage of the resources available at our fingertips. But we thrive on those commodity products that cannot grow on American soil, such as coffee and chocolate. This is where the notion of fair trade comes into play. Generally speaking, the global population is unaware of the labor-intensive process that takes place in order to produce that sweet cup of morning joe, which fuels our groggy mornings and those midday slumps.

This year will bring positive, long-lasting traffic trends to the industry, predicts NPD Group.

Pressure to improve the healthfulness of kids meals and restaurant fare in general along with the influence of the growing Asian, Hispanic, Boomer and Millennial population groups are among factors that will shape the restaurant industry in 2012 and beyond, according to The NPD Group, a market-research company based in Port Washington, N.Y. Overall, NPD’s foodservice-market-research forecast of U.S. commercial foodservice traffic projects consumer demand for restaurant-prepared meals and snacks to rise slightly above 2011 levels.