44 | NEWS | CATERING AND HOSPITALIT Y For more HE catering news click here
“Meating” new friends
By David Russell, founder and chairman of the Russell Partnership
The importance of food in developed culture is an interesting trend when looking at family cohesion; take a traditional Italian family who cook together, eat together and share recipe secrets across generations, in many cases when compared to other cultures, this unit finds commonality through a single interest: food. Why is this important for our students
today and how we design and facilitate our universities? When a student leaves for university, usually in the early weeks and months a new support unit is needed, this was identified in quantitative research undertaken by the Russell Partnership. This research also highlights that new
support networks for students are more easily facilitated by providing food and beverage areas both in halls of residence and on campus that are designed well for eating, drinking, working and socialising. When students bond more quickly with
others, anxiety reduces and retention rates increase, which benefits both the student and university long term. Factors such as personal confidence, propensity to socialise, and overcoming homesickness will always affect students early on in their careers, however facilitating social environments around meals can help reduce these issues. Whereas the origins of sharing food may
have been to survive and sharing was to win respect and loyalty, in today’s society at university a meal time experience can be linked to a different type of survival based on starting, developing, and maintaining relationships that allow a relationship network to be formed often when family and home friends are no longer available. Food can be used as a powerful tool to help reduce anxiety, and increase the chances of success for bonding between new groups and can resonate with our ancestral link to sharing and bonding with others over food.
Lancaster makes Food for Life history
Lancaster is the first university in the country to be awarded two prestigious Gold ‘Food for Life’ Catering Marks. As part of Lancaster University’s
Tetley Decaf wins on taste
Tetley has been recognised at the 2014 Great Taste awards, winning a star for its Decaf blend. Tetley Decaf was assessed on taste
alone, by a panel of 405 food experts, including top chefs, buyers, retailers and more than 40 food writers. The Great
Taste awards are organised by the Guild of Fine Food, and are the acknowledged benchmark for
speciality food and drink.
commitment to serving quality, locally sourced, sustainable food, the Soil Association has awarded its restaurants, Café 21 and The Lounge, the Gold ‘Food for Life’ Catering Mark for serving fresh and healthy meals using local and organic ingredients. The University strives to provide
great quality food for all of its students, staff and visitors and is aware that food production and consumption can
Foraging on the increase
Research by a final year Harper Adams University student has found that foraging for food is becoming increasingly popular
Kate Price, 22, chose ‘Wild food foraging in the UK’ as her dissertation study after identifying a significant gap in existing research during a literature review. Her research aims to identify the
current state of wild food use and whether foraging is being undertaken sustainably. To do this, she distributed questionnaires to foragers and conducted structured interviews. Kate, from Hixon, Stafford, said: “I
produced two online questionnaires – one directed at people who forage casually, and one at people who forage for a living and I used organisations such as the Shropshire Wildlife Trust as well as social media. “The results showed a 7% increase in
foraging participation among non- professionals, particularly young people from urban areas, during the last five years due to a renewed interest in both nature and traditional knowledge."
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92