Since 2024, the annual Climate Kitchen Summer Institute has served as an incubator for innovative research projects addressing shortfalls in our current food system. Applying the principles of design thinking and emergent inquiry, interdisciplinary teams including faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students have explored feasibility and sensory preferences alternative protein sources, culturally appropriate foods, nutrient-dense whole grains, and native, edible plants.  

The Climate Kitchen Summer Institute is funded by the UVM Food Systems Research Institute. 

The Climate Kitchen sponsors courses at the undergraduate and graduate level that teach students necessary skills and concepts – in kitchens and beyond - that can address individual and planetary health. 

The Climate Kitchen courses integrate the sustainability tenets of the Climate Kitchen throughout the curriculum: plant forward, integrating tastes and habits, low waste, whole food utilization and regional/local sourcing. The undergraduate course, Foods for Planetary Health, combines in-person lectures and labs and is offered by the Nutrition and Food Sciences department. The graduate course, Cooking for Individual and Planetary Health, is an all-online course.

The Climate Kitchen, in collaboration with the Culinary Medicine program at UVM Medical Center and the Osher Center for Integrative Health, has developed learning modules that explore key concepts for future professionals in nutrition and health science that will be used across University of Vermont and University of Vermont Medical Center. 

The current approach to the declining amount of time and money spent by Americans on food prepared at home is often to say, “cooking is easy” and “cooking doesn’t need to take much time.” This approach can alleviate initial resistance to picking up a knife and heating up a pan but also minimizes what needs to be learned to be successful – from start (what to buy) to finish (sitting down to a meal).  

In Cook/Time, a forthcoming open access manual, we provide a fully online curriculum that can be customized for use in a workshop, a culinary medicine intervention or an undergraduate lab. This curriculum embraces the persistent perception of time poverty and designs modules that enhance skills and knowledge to move people beyond that barrier. The manual includes modues that teach about cooking and eating for planetary health. 

In the Climate Kitchen, researchers and students do the work to translate sustainably sourced ingredients into tasty and easy to digest recipes. They start with an idea rooted in the Climate Kitchen tenets (e.g. what variety of mung bean produces the ideal dal for the Bhutanese-Nepali community? What types of baking projects are best suited to swapping in buckwheat flour? How many recipes does it take to use up a whole cabbage?) and work from there to develop a clear and easy to follow recipe that produces consistent and delicious results. This process varies depending on the goals and audience, but typically includes identifying a basic recipe, several rounds of testing to make sure ingredient amounts make sense and instructions are easy to follow, tasting to see if anything needs to be adjusted, and updating the recipe based on the results.

For the researchers, this process can include more formal sensory analysis with focus groups to evaluate consumer opinion or answer research questions about sensory preferences. Our student interns focus more on communication once the recipe has been refined. They have been helping us design recipe card templates, analyze nutrient content of recipes, and communicate how these recipes embody our sustainability tenets through recipe annotations, and social media posts. 

The Climate Kitchen works with internal and external partners to on shared goals. 

We have been partnering for several years with UVM Dining Services to develop recipes that adhere to our Sustainability Tenets. These recipes are showcased in pop-up lunches and soon to be in a campus-wide food conference. Our interns are working on methods to valorize scraps from food preparation and cycle them back into the edible offerings of Dining Services. 

If you are interested in partnering with us, please reach out to atrubek@uvm.edu. 

In addition to sponsoring research through our Summer Institute and student internships, Climate Kitchen members undertake their own related research projects. 

A recent project connected to our curriculum work was undertaken to evaluate how the University of Vermont undergraduate course Foods for Planetary Health (FPH) transformed student practices (or didn’t) in everyday life. FPH introduces key tenets of sustainable food preparation and builds cooking skills to translate those tenets into everyday practice, extending long-term development of “food agency” pedagogy to the realms of sustainability and food systems. In initial findings, students reported attitude shifts towards increased appreciation of the food system and recognition of the environmental impact of their food practices. 

The Climate Kitchen hosts workshops, training, and cooking classes in collaboration with our partners. These events utilize inquiry-based learning to guide participants through the practical application of the Climate Kitchen tenets in the kitchen through hands-on cooking and activities. Some past examples include:

• Design Thinking workshop with Felipe Massa (Grossman School of Business, UVM)
• John Dewey’s Kitchen workshop with Lisa Heldke (Gustavus Adolphus College)
• Baking with Whole Grains workshop with King Arthur Baking
• Mindfulness in the Kitchen for UVM Go and CNHS courses
• Farm to Kitchen for UVM Go and 4-H in partnership with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont

Each summer, the Climate Kitchen holds an introductory workshop for the current Summer Research Institute cohort, introducing researchers to the principles of Climate Kitchen. This workshop covers Design Thinking and Dewey model principles, as well as opportunities for participants to apply these approaches through hands-on cooking activities. They are also introduced to the basics of sensory analysis. The research teams also present their projects to the group and the Climate Kitchen team for feedback.