- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
![If fresh fruits and vegetables are made available, children will choose to eat them.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/food/blogfiles/31956small.jpg)
Several grade school students set down their forks to eat their green salad, picking up individual lettuce leaves with their fingers and pushing them into their mouths. Not that I was there to judge for style, it was just an observation as I looked around the cafeteria festooned in colorful hand-cut paper banners to see how many of the kids had taken a salad.
The youngsters are required to take at least a half-cup serving of fresh fruits or vegetables as part of a healthful meal to meet national nutrition standards, but I noticed they...
![Julianna Payne's cupcakes were a big hit at the Solano County Fair. From left are Gloria Gonzalez, superintendent of McCormack Hall; Julianna Payne; Sharon Payne, assistant superintendent; and Angelica Gonzalez, staff. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey).](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/food/blogfiles/31645small.jpg)
Many young adults entering the workforce know little about meal preparation.
Not so for those enrolled in the foods and nutrition program in UC Agriculture and Natural Resources' (UC ANR) 4-H Youth Development Program. Youths as young as five learn how to prepare healthy nutritious food.
And yes, they learn how to make desserts, such as special treats for their family and friends at Halloween.
Former Solano County 4-H All-Star Ambassador Julianna Payne was so interested in the foods and nutrition project offered by the Sherwood Forest 4-H Club, Vallejo, she plans a culinary career.
"That's where I found my love of...
![A farming landscape can be co-managed for both produce safety and nature conservation. Promising practices include buffering farm fields with non-crop vegetation to filter pathogens from runoff and planting low-risk crops between leafy green vegetables and grazeable lands.(Illustration by Mattias Lanas and Joseph Burg)](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/food/blogfiles/31415small.jpg)
The effort to improve food safety by clearing wild vegetation surrounding crops is not helping, and in some cases may even backfire, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
The findings, reported today (Aug. 10), in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, call into question the effectiveness of removing non-crop vegetation as a way to reduce field contamination of fresh produce by disease-causing pathogens. This practice led to extensive loss of habitat in a region that is globally important for food production and natural resources.
The practice was implemented largely in response to a 2006 outbreak of pathogenic E. coli in packaged spinach...
- Author: Diane Nelson
![Fermentors at UC Davis (Photo: Kassie Borreson)](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/food/blogfiles/31232small.jpg)
Ten large, shiny tanks stand near the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at UC Davis, holding more than a year of rainwater and the key to processing food and drink during a drought. The water tanks, and the teaching-and-research winery they support, are showing students and winemakers throughout the world how to reduce processing costs, improve wine quality, and protect the planet's dwindling natural resources.
“It's about self-sufficiency,” says Roger Boulton, UC Davis professor of enology and chemical engineering. “We're demonstrating how you can operate a winery, brewery, or any food processing plant with the water that falls and the sun that...
- Author: Iqbal Pittalwala
![Eric Focht shows the guacamole he prepares for an avocado tasting at UC Riverside.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/food/blogfiles/31115small.jpg)
The lab of Mary Lu Arpaia, a Cooperative Extension subtropical horticulturalist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) and the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at UC Riverside, hosts an avocado tasting each month on the UCR campus. Attended typically by about 60 people, the tastings have grown in popularity over the years.
Eric Focht, a staff research associate in the Arpaia lab, helps organize the tastings; the guacamole he prepares specially for the occasion serves as an additional...