NFOK20000U Meal Systems and Technologies
MSc Programme in Integrated Food Studies
Governments and local authorities have an important role and responsibility in ensuring food and meals for a wide range of people. These include elderly people in care homes, ensuring ‘healthy’ eating opportunities for children in schools and kindergartens, meeting the nutritional needs of hospital patients, to meals for prisoners or the armed forces and often the workforce employed in government service.
Public meals in this respect are highly complex and diverse food systems with technical, political and procurement challenges.
This course will concentrate on the public meals systems, introducing aspects where technology plays a role. It includes topics such as processing, food quality, food safety and sustainability. The course covers both national and international perspectives on meal systems. The course touches upon opportunities and barriers to system changes in relation to producing healthy, sustainable, palatable and ethical meals. In addition, as part of the course students will conduct innovative meal centered experiments using the iBuffet at the Future Consumer Lab. The experiments will include different behavioral change strategies, e.g. nudging.
A common theme running throughout the lessons will be the public health nutrition approach to food-related issues. This means the application of a logic sequence to be followed for identifying problems and solving them using public meals to meet nutrition and health objectives. For this approach, the students will be introduced to basic statistics and the application of it.
After completion of the course it is expected that the student has achieved the following qualifications:
Knowledge
- Knowledge and understanding of the history and development of public food systems
- Knowledge of the approach to public meals from a public health nutrition (PHN) perspective
- Knowledge about how public food supply chains are organised and work as a ‘food system’, including food preservation methods, good manufacturing practices, and hazard analysis and food hygiene
- Knowledge and comprehension on how sustainability and nutrition concerns impact on public food systems
- Knowledge about basic statistics.
Skills
- Assess the different public food systems from an integrated PHN approach
- Understand and apply nudging and choice architecture in a meal setting
- Ability to design and solve a multi-disciplinary problem within public food systems
- Use kitchen-lab facilities
- Apply descriptive statistics to collected data using appropriate software
- Communicate research results in scientific writing.
Competences
- Integrate the public health nutrition aspects to the public meals systems
- Critically analyse specific public meal systems and technologies
- Contribute critically to the design of public meal systems including meal design, HACCP, procurement, serving and consumption thereof
- Ability to conduct meal centered research
- Ability to collaborate and contribute effectively in group work.
See Absalon for a list of course litterature.
- Category
- Hours
- Lectures
- 53
- Preparation
- 80
- Laboratory
- 16
- Project work
- 50
- Guidance
- 6
- Exam
- 1
- Total
- 206
- Credit
- 7,5 ECTS
- Type of assessment
- Oral examination, 15 minutes
- Type of assessment details
- Individual oral examination about the group assignment and the
course curriculum. Without preparation time.
The student may use up to 5 minutes presenting their group assignment, before the questioning by the examiners. - Exam registration requirements
Preparation of a group assignment, handed in before the oral exam.
- Aid
- All aids allowed
- Marking scale
- 7-point grading scale
- Censorship form
- No external censorship
Several internal examiners.
- Re-exam
The same as the ordinary exam. Non-approved group assignments must be edited and handed in two weeks prior to the re-exam date.
Criteria for exam assesment
See Learning Outcome.
Course information
- Language
- English
- Course code
- NFOK20000U
- Credit
- 7,5 ECTS
- Level
- Full Degree Master
- Duration
- 1 block
- Placement
- Block 3
- Schedule
- A
- Course capacity
- 36
The number of places might be reduced if you register in the late-registration period (BSc and MSc) or as a credit or single subject student.
Study board
- Study Board of Food, Human Nutrition and Sports
Contracting department
- Department of Food Science
Contracting faculty
- Faculty of Science
Course Coordinators
- Helene Christine Reinbach
(helene.reinbach@food.ku.dk)
(Main responsible) - Bodil Helene Allesen-Holm (bhah@food.ku.dk)
(Course coordinator) - Marianne Thomsen (mth@food.ku.dk)