Student-Created Cooking Show Educates Students on Food Insecurity

Image courtesy of Patrick Keenan

For a long time, I believed that if a student could pay for college, then affording food wouldn’t be an issue. In fact, many people that I interviewed felt this way. We often forget that many students receive financial aid in order to afford college, and some students don’t have the privilege of having their parents help out.

Research Director Yu-Wei Wang and her graduate research assistant Leah Bush in the Counseling Center at this university surveyed 4,901 University of Maryland undergraduate and graduate students and found that 20 percent of college students are food insecure, meaning that one in five students don’t know where their next meal will come from or can only afford to eat a single meal a day.

Low food security affects students’ concentration, mental health, and self-esteem and can cause health issues such as depression and anxiety disorders.

Patrick Keenan, a senior dietetics student, is the founder of the Terps vs. Pros Food Challenge, a food competition web series where students and professional chefs compete in a cook-off that highlights food insecurity on campus, resources to prevent food insecurity and teaches easy, convenient and healthy recipes to students.

Terps vs. Pros Food Challenge was created to teach students how to make practical, nutritious and budget-friendly meals, while also trying to shed light on food insecurity on campus. The show interviews UMD students about their thoughts on food security. It also highlights different resources students struggling with food insecurity can use and offers various affordable recipes.

The contestants (one UMD student and one professional chef) have 30 minutes to prepare a three-course healthy meal using any ingredients they choose. They are judged by Dietetics Program Director Dr. Margaret Udahogora and Chef Rob Fahey, the executive chef of UMD Dining Services, based on creativity, taste, texture and innovative techniques.

The web series was created specifically to help students with low food security.

“The challenges incorporated into our cookoffs are based on real issues that students across the country face in their day-to-day lives,” Keenan said. “The entire Terps vs. Pros team put [in] an enormous effort to make our solutions accessible to the students we aimed to reach.”

This is why the Terps vs. Pros Food Challenges is helpful. To make the show, Keenan received assistance from Udahogora and her assistant faculty member, Ashley Lewis.

In September 2017, Keenan volunteered with several dietetics students to make black bean quesadillas to promote plant-based protein sources at an event hosted by The School of Public Health Equity and the Mid-Maryland Mission of Mercy. Udahogora supervised the students in the commercial kitchen lab in Marie Mount Hall. As an offhand comment on how large the cooking labs were, Keenan said, “You could film a cooking competition in here!” Udahogora agreed, and after eight months of hard work, Terps vs. Pros was born.

In the cooking contest, contestants can only use basic cooking utensils and microwaves to cook their food. Cooking with a microwave is challenging, but with some imagination and research, it can be used to make healthy meals, such as stuffed potatoes and creamy ramen. Some students only have a microwave to cook their food, so competitions like this one are helpful in demonstrating that only having a microwave shouldn’t stop you from cooking.

The contestants of the first episode were Emma Slattery, a UMD alumna and a current dietetic intern at Virginia Tech; and a professional sous chef, David Gonzalez.

Slattery made coconut curry popcorn for her appetizer, creamy ramen with poached eggs as her entree and whole grain carrot mug cake with a yogurt glaze as her dessert. Gonzalez made mini avocado tarts for his appetizer, two southwest loaded baked sweet potatoes for his entree and two raspberry lemon curd greek yogurt parfaits for his dessert.

These recipes are quick and easy, and they were made with just a microwave and inexpensive ingredients.

Image courtesy of Patrick Keenan

Slattery described the experience as thrilling.

“It was hard! But luckily you don't need to be a professional chef to make delicious and nutritious meals,” Slattery said. “Cooking meals at home can reduce food costs since eating out or buying prepared foods are more expensive than buying ingredients… Cooking meals yourself can also reduce sodium added sugars and saturated fats since when you cook something yourself, you can control what goes into your food.”

One reason that students don’t cook often is that they lack the time, but designating a day or evening to do all of your cooking for the week is a great way to save time and make sure that you have lunches packed for the following days. Cooking with friends is also a great way to turn cooking into a fun activity, and, as Terps vs. Pros shows, you don’t need fancy kitchen utensils to do it.

If you are wondering who won the first episode, go watch the video, and try the recipes while you’re at it!

Keenan and Udahogora recently won a grant from the University Sustainability Fund and said they are working on three more episodes with challenges related to food security and sustainability.

“Guaranteeing food security requires a focus on the accessibility, availability and utilization of food over time,” Keenan said. “Sustainability is of critical importance to ensure a healthy environment that can provide us food for generations to come.”

If you or someone you know is food insecure, there are resources on campus like the Campus Pantry and the Emergency Meal Fund that can help.