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Appetite for Knowledge

Year Awarded

2020

Amount

€24,430

  • Organisation:University College Cork (UCC)
  • Audience:Transition Year Students, Post Primary Teachers - Senior Cycle, Parents, Third Level
  • Location:Cork, Waterford
  • Topic:Science

Project Summary

Food is at the epicentre of human life and experiences, and can be used to represent health, wealth, culture and relationships. In recent years, our knowledge of food has been informed by various media, often conflicting and often creating further disinformation and disengagement between society and food. The distance between knowledge of food-nutritional-agricultural sciences and its perception in society and media has grown expansively, with many internet/media fora disregarding scientists and health professionals as scaremongers.

“Appetite for Knowledge” is a science communication forum for young people to explore and chat about food-nutritional-agricultural sciences through their chosen creative presentation styles, with a simple goal of sowing a seed of awareness, engagement and empowerment amongst the next generation. Often, our relationship with food is constructed by our parents, family and peers and these views can have an enormous effect on health and wellbeing throughout life. By engaging directly with school students, an audience which is often vulnerable to misinformation regarding healthy food and nutrition, this project will allow them to take leadership of the topic and will facilitate their discussion in a creative and communication-driven forum.

With global challenges around the accessibility of healthy, sustainable and economically-valued food, many of which are specifically called out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, this project represents a timely and impactful platform to create a positive self-directed, learning experience for young people, along with providing them with exposure to education and career opportunities within food-nutritional-agricultural sciences.