Clemson student team awarded scholarship for food safety video

Published: June 19, 2012

By Taylor Reeves

CLEMSON — Clemson University’s Melissa Macher and Anna Saunders will share a $4,500 scholarship from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. The award is sponsored by The Academy Foundation/ConAgra Food Safety Student Challenge, a program that seeks to educate college students about the importance of food safety.

Macher is a recent graduate from Anderson with a degree in food science. She will use the scholarship award to fund a 10-month dietetic internship at the Medical University of South Carolina to become a registered dietician. Saunders, a food science major who also is from Anderson, will use the scholarship to fund her graduate studies in food science at Clemson. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics chooses nine scholarship recipients each year for the Food Safety Challenge.

For the challenge, Macher and Saunders created a cooking demonstration video that highlights food safety practices. They surveyed students about their dining habits and basic food safety knowledge, then produced an instructional cooking video for a basic pasta salad to demonstrate food safety rules in practice.

The academy stipulates four specific food safety rules that must be included in applicants’ projects: washing hands often, keeping raw meat and prepared food separate, refrigerating food at the proper temperature and cooking food at the proper temperature. Macher and Saunders feature each of these standards in their cooking video. They will submit progress reports and final analysis of their project to the academy to receive their award.

The project has allowed Macher and Saunders to evaluate and combat misconceptions about food safety that are prevalent on college campuses.

“Food safety is a particular concern among college students because so many students have roommates,” said Macher. “With so many things on students’ minds, food safety practices can often be ignored or overlooked, which may lead to health risks.”

“This video is a fun way to make students aware of simple things,” said Saunders. “We like to cook, so we enjoyed showing students how to make something easy and healthy while getting our message across.”

The video may be viewed at http://youtu.be/ZVqSQtdvD38.

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