Seafood featured for USU Food Day
USU celebrated its third annual National Food Day on Thursday, focusing on sustainable seafood.
Dining Services and 12 seniors in the advanced dietetics practicum class partnered to plan an event aimed at studying seafood.
Dietetics clinical professor Tamara Steinitz said this year’s theme, “The Deep Blue Goes Green,” dove into three areas – fishy concerns, fishy choices and fishy cooking.
Sustainable fishing is a concern many students on this campus have not considered, according to Alan Andersen, director of Dining Services.
“It matters where fish comes from,” Andersen said. “It’s important to us in Logan.”
Steinitz said the team hoped to educate students to raise awareness. Displays and demonstrations were designed to inform students about how to buy fish, package terms, what types to eat, easy cooking methods and ways to use leftover fish.
Steinitz developed the idea of a sustainable seafood theme while spending her summer in Port Orford, Ore., where she met fishermen practicing longfishing.
She approached Andersen with the idea and he and three chefs traveled to Port Orford. They met with fishermen and returned home with new cooking methods and an awareness of sustainable seafood.
Andersen said the fish served for Food Day included king salmon, halibut, black cod and ling cod – all fished in Port Orford. They were caught on Sunday and frozen and shipped to Logan on Wednesday.
“We had fish to feed about 400,” Andersen said.
Each hour, Dining Service chefs demonstrated simple cooking methods and had students sample the product.
He said it created an opportunity for Dining Services to lend support to the academic side of the college experience and to work directly with dietetic students.
Andersen said they perform lab work in the Junction kitchens. Food Day was just another chance to work with the students and to help educate everyone on campus.
“I thought it was awesome,” said Nathan Coonen, a senior majoring in environmental engineering. “It’s really great to build awareness of fishing practices because it’s a really big problem and something not a lot of people know about.”
Past Food Days on campus, along with this one, have focused on waste prevention. According to Steinitz, about 40 percent of food in the U.S. is wasted. The event encouraged students to spend less on food, waste less and create less waste from eating.
“I think they did a great job,” said Abbey Carlson, dietetics supervisor of Soup Connection. “It’s t
he best Food Day yet.”
Food Day is a nationwide celebration of healthy, affordable and sustainably produced food. Andersen USU’s version of the celebration was educational and reached hundreds of students.
“If students gain an awareness that the choices they make in their seafood consumption, the kinds they eat and where it’s bought, then they can really make a difference,” Steinitz said.
-amanda.grover12@gmail.com