Associate Professor Alejandro Rojas (Principal Investigator, Think&EatGreen@School Project) will be this year’s recipient of the Canadian Association for Food Studies Excellence in Food Studies Award. The awards ceremony will be held during the CAFS conference in Ottawa, Ontario on the evening of June 2nd, 2015.
Congratulations, Alejandro!
For more information on the conference, click here.
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Congratulations to PhD candidate Crystal Karakochuk (Supervisor: Tim Green) who tied for First Place in the Global Nutrition Council Emerging Leaders in Nutritional Science Poster Competition, presented by the American Society for Nutrition.
Crystal received the award in Boston last night as part of the Experimental Biology conference, an annual meeting comprised of over 14,000 scientists and exhibitors representing general fields of study include anatomy, physiology, pathology, biochemistry, nutrition, and pharmacology.
Congratulations Crystal!
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Kyly Whitfield, a PhD Candidate in Human Nutrition under the supervision of Dr. Tim Green, placed 2nd in the UBC finals of the 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition.
The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) is an academic competition that assists current graduate students with fostering effective presentation and communication skills. Participants have just three minutes to explain the breadth and significance of their research project to a non-specialist audience.
UBC was one of the first universities in North America to host a 3MT competition, when it held the inaugural 3MT @UBC in 2011. Every year heats are held across campus beginning in February, with winners moving on to the UBC-wide Semi-Finals and Finals in March.
This year, more than 100 graduate students participated in the event, with winners of departmental heats moving on to the UBC semi-finals; the top 10 semi-finalists competed in the UBC final on March 12. Kyly was first runner up at the finals, for her presentation on, Fortified fish sauce: a simple solution to thiamin deficiency in rural Cambodia.
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The 2015 LFS Graduate Student Conference was held on March 5 at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC-Vancouver.
Over 35 graduate and senior undergraduate students presented their research to an audience of ~100 students, faculty, staff, and guests.
Congratulations to all of our presenters! The results of the oral and poster competitions is as follows:
1st Place: Karen Fong, Environmental adaptation and stress response mechanisms of Salmonella enterica in peanut oil, peanuts and chia seeds (Supervisor: Dr. Siyun Wang)
1st Runner Up: Asadeh Behnam-Shabahang, Feeding and Social Behaviours of Primiparous and Multiparous Dairy Cows During the Transition Period (Supervisor: Heather Neave)
2nd Runner Up: Joao Costa, Early pair housing increases solid feed intake and weight gains in dairy calves (Supervisor: Dr. Daniel Weary)
People’s Choice Award: Joshua Edward, Uncommon Grounds: LGBTIQ Communities, Urban Agriculture and Ecologies of Social Difference (Supervisor: Dr. Eduardo Jovel)
1st Place: Akshit Puri, Can a Nitrogen-fixing bacteria isolated from Lodgepole Pine trees reside inside Agricultural Crops? (Supervisor: Dr. Christopher Chanway)
1st Runner Up: Nicola Adderley, Are young dairy calves able to sort a total mixed ration? (Supervisor: Joao Costa)
2nd Runner Up: Jiaqi Li, Chemical, physical and morphological properties of bacterial biofilms affect survival of encased Campylobacter jejuni under aerobic stress (Supervisor: Dr. Xiaonan Lu)
People’s Choice Award: Allison Daniel, Formative Research for the Development of a Home Fortification Programme for Young Children in Burundi: Results of the Feasibility Study (Dr. Tim Green)
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By Corey Allen, UBC News
Coconut oil sales are on the rise. Sainsbury’s in the United Kingdom reports coconut oil sales are up 442 per cent over 2013. The popularity of coconut oil as a multi-purpose oil, used both as a beauty product and for cooking, has it flying off the shelves. Avocado oil is not too far behind.
Gail Hammond, a dietitian and food, nutrition and health lecturer in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, discusses the coconut oil craze and why mixing it up in the kitchen can be a good thing.
Why do think coconut oil has gained popularity among consumers?
There are three things that immediately come to mind: consumers are becoming more nutrition savvy, recent research has challenged the longstanding notion that saturated fats are harmful to heart health, and celebrity endorsements of coconut oil have turned up the heat on using it for everything from beauty products to cooking.
What are the health benefits of using coconut oil versus other oils?
Despite a prevailing message to reduce our saturated fat intake, we know that not all saturated fats have the same health effects. The predominant type of saturated fat found in coconut oil is metabolized differently than the majority of saturated fat that we otherwise consume. And, even though coconut oil provides people with a ready source of energy, the benefits of using it as your primary fat source need to be weighed out with the need to consume essential fatty acids, which are not saturated and not found to a great extent in coconut oil. So, if you are crazed about using coconut oil it is important to also include other types of oils in your diet.
What makes for the best cooking oil?
I think using a variety of oils is the way to go depending on your preferences and use. Some people prefer a more pronounced flavour such as the fruity taste of olive oil whereas others favour a lighter taste such as canola oil. Some oils are best used unheated, such as using olive oil in salad dressings, while others are better suited for use in cooking. Oils that have a high smoking point—that is, the temperature at which they start to smoke in a hot pan and begin to lose their health benefits—are good choices for cooking. Avocado oil can be used at a high temperature up to around 520°F/270°C without smoking, whereas coconut oil is better used at a more moderate temperature up to about 350°F/175°C.
What oils do you use?
I use different oils. Typically, I’ll use olive or flaxseed oil for making salad dressings and I tend to use canola oil for cooking purposes.
This article originally appeared in UBC Reports. It is reprinted here with permission.
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As anyone living on BC’s coastal climate will tell you, we get a lot of rain. So it’s not surprising that rainwater management is extremely important in order to avoid flooding, increased erosion and high concentrations of pollutants in our waterways.
With those issues in mind, last semester students in our Urban Watershed Management course (SOIL 516) partnered with the District of North Vancouver to further understand the role of vegetation and landscape designs in issues of rainwater management and stream health.
The students used the Water Balance Model Express and GEOweb, interactive online tools that allow land owners to assess land cover on their property and see how rainwater will pass through the landscape. The students were able to view the practical impacts of different types of property design, including the effects of redevelopment, and create recommendations on how to minimize rainwater issues in future developments.
“There are some relatively simple solutions property owners can implement to prevent rainwater runoff and avoid issues of erosion and transport of contaminants, like increasing the amount of green spaces in and around properties to help water infiltrate back into the soil and subsurface,” says Julie Wilson, Academic Coordinator of the LFS Master of Land and Water Systems program.
Julie Wilson
She adds that additional research in North Vancouver and other Lower Mainland municipalities is necessary to increase awareness and knowledge of the impacts of rainwater management on property construction and redevelopment.
This project will run in future sessions of SOIL 516.
The Urban Watershed Management course is one of a series of four online Watershed Management courses. For more information, visit the course website.
–By Charlotte Bushnell-Boates
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We all know the feeling – the energizing spark of a great idea. Fuelled by positivity and the best intentions, your mind races through all the awesome things you can do. That heady feeling goes on for awhile, but inevitably you hit a wall – “how am I actually going to make this happen?”
It’s easy for ideas to get bogged down in real world practicalities – money, time, and lack of guidance are just three of the most common and major obstacles. Thankfully, these barriers can be overcome if you know where to look. Dru Yates, a Master of Soil Sciences student, got both money and guidance for her big idea by partnering up with a community organization and applying for a Chapman + Innovation grant.
Dru used the grant money to start an equipment library and hold workshops to empower community members to preserve and process their own fresh seafood.
[Read more about Dru’s project on the UBC FYI Blog]
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In February 2015, a research team lead by Jennifer Black was awarded $200,000 by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Population Health Intervention Research funding program for a project titled: “Evaluating the Impact of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society’s Food Hub Programs on Dietary Intake and Food Security“.
This project brings together diverse researchers from the University of British Columbia (Jennifer Black, Nathan Lauster and Gail Hammond) and Simon Fraser University (Scott Lear, Nadine Schuurman and Charles Goldsmith) who will work closely with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society (GVFBS) as they transform their delivery model. Having developed a food philosophy that will set nutritional standards for food banks, the GVFBS is currently implementing a ‘food hub’ program that will provide opportunities for members to select foods from a healthier array of offerings, and engage with diverse agencies who provide health promotion, nutrition education, and social service referrals. Through enhanced partnerships with local farmers and gardening programs, members are also able to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at subsidized prices.
This project will involve trainees from the Public Health and Urban Nutrition Research group, including Ellie Holmes. Ellie, a registered dietitian pursuing a MSc in Human Nutrition at UBC, is helping to lead the development and analysis of key survey tools for this project.
The evaluation of this intervention will inform the transformation of the food banking system in Vancouver. In the long-term, findings will provide valuable insight about how food banks across Canada could leverage longstanding infrastructure and trusted community relationships to better meet broader health equity and community food security goals.
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Alumnus Hugh Daubeny (BSc Ag ’53, MSc Ag ’55) passed away on January 2, 2015. After graduating from UBC, Hugh spent almost 40 years with Agriculture Canada in Agassiz, Vancouver, and Abbotsford, developing raspberry and strawberry cultivars; most notable are the Totem Strawberry and the Tulameen Raspberry, which have become the international standard for berry quality.
Hugh was awarded the Wilder Silver Medal for fruit breeding from the American Pomological Society, was a Friend of the UBC Botanical Garden, and regularly contributed articles to Seeds of Diversity Canada magazine and the newsletter of the Native Plant Society of B.C.
A celebration of life is planned for this Saturday, February 14th from 12:30 – 4:30 at UBC Botanical Garden.
With files from the Vancouver Sun obituary, January 10, 2015.
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UBC researchers have detected antibiotic-resistant E. coli bacteria on lettuce from several Vancouver farmers’ markets.
Researchers collected samples from 14 vendors at five different, unidentified markets in Vancouver, and tested them for a range of different bacteria. Coliform bacteria was detected in 72 per cent of samples, of which 13 per cent harbored E. coli. Resistance to one or more antibiotics was detected in 97 per cent of the E. coli samples. One-fifth of the E. coli in the samples suggested fecal contamination.
Lead author of the study, Jayde Wood, a former master’s student in Food Science with the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, stressed that all the samples fell within Health Canada guidelines. But she said the findings warrant further investigation. [read the full media release]
See also: Boiled Salad, Anyone?
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