Items filtered by date: August 2011

Most consumers who have enjoyed dining from a food truck say they’re not a passing fad. But many non-users are still hesitant to try one out.

A new study by Chicago-based trend-tracker Technomic reveals good news for mobile food vehicles, as 91% of consumers polled who are familiar with food trucks say they view the trend as having staying power and not a passing fad. Only 7% of consumers who use mobile food vehicles (MFV) say they expect their frequency of visits to food trucks to decrease over the next year.

For actual change to occur through President Obama’s policy solution to global competition and the domestic education problem, political agendas need to focus not merely on the matriculation point of students into postsecondary education, but on the path from Kindergarten through college.

By Paul DeVries, M.A.Ed., CHE, CSW, FMP

The common belief in America today perceives education, both in K-12 and postsecondary, as a meritocratic conduit that ostensibly provides egalitarian access to all services and end products of a democratic society. This perception in part can be attributed to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which, upon cursory inspection, effectively abrogated many of the inequities present in education. This landmark case, however, belies an endemic problem of unequal educational access, and support that remains to this today.

Numerous techniques exist to encourage students, convincing them that they can achieve success if they invest time and effort, and that their work has value.

By Bradley J. Ware, Ph.D., and C. Lévesque Ware, Ph.D.

Students are at times already highly motivated when they enter the lab/classroom due to past successes or an interest in the course topic. There are also those individuals who have not experienced the same positive results or who have a preconceived dislike for a course based on a perceived degree of content difficulty. It is precisely in the interest of both these groups that motivation and student engagement should be of primary importance for the chef/instructor from the very first day of lab/class. It is imperative to retain and foster the enthusiasm of highly motivated students and of dire necessity to help motivate others to achieve success.

Big shifts in U.S. foodways emerging at this year’s conference included “clean” menu descriptions, Korean influences, strategic use of salt and black pepper and “invisibly healthy” indulgence.

Courtesy of Olson Communications

The seventh conference, August 1-4 in Newport Beach, Calif., brought flavor front and center for all conference attendees.