Food Studies Institute

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How the Food Studies Institute came to be...

The award-winning Food is Elementary curriculum had its humble beginnings in the classrooms of Antonia’s own children. When our founder, Antonia Demas started volunteering at her children’s classrooms, the young mother created food-based units on the topics that the kids were studying. These lessons involved food preparation and learning about their cultural history.

Antonia was soon hired as a consultant to develop and teach more of these lessons. She consistently observed that, across diverse groups, if kids engage in hands-on, sensory-based activities, food literacy education is highly effective. The problem was with adult perceptions about kids and a lack of understanding of their natural curiosity. As an experienced educator, Antonia understood that children first learn through sensory experimentation, they touch, taste, observe, smell, and listen to make sense of their surroundings.

A growing frustration Antonia had was that many educators didn’t take her work seriously. She believes it stems from a fundamental bias about what’s perceived as “women’s work”. In order to gain credibility, she enrolled in a Master’s, then Ph.D. program at Cornell University. Dr. Demas now lives in Trumansburg, NY, where she runs her nonprofit, the Food Studies Institute.