The Food Studies Institute @ Acorn House

On Wednesday, April 11^th, we will be having a guest speaker in our classroom. Her name is Ms. Antonia Demas, who is the President and Founder of The Food Studies Institute.

Antonia Demas has a Ph.D. in education, nutrition, and anthropology from Cornell University. Dr. Demas has worked in various capacities for almost 40 years developing food-based curricula and teaching food-studies in a variety of educational settings with people of diverse ages, as well as ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Because of her excitement about the learning and health improvements that occurs among children when they have positive, sensory-based, hands-on experience with food, she has devoted herself engaging in research to document this observation scientifically. Her dissertation won two national awards for Excellence and Creativity. She is the founder and director of the Food Studies Institute, based in Trumansburg, New York, a non-profit devoted to improving the long-term health and education of children. Her curriculum, Food Is Elementary, has been used successfully in more than 3,000 schools in 33 states. She consults throughout the U.S. and abroad and trains and certifies teachers as food educators. Dr. Demas is a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health and at the University of Illinois Medical School.