Browse Food Stories - Page 5

From an early age, we’re told by our parents to make sure we eat our vegetables. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that people eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day. However, there’s long been confusion around what is a vegetable versus a fruit. So, when is a vegetable actually a fruit — or a root or a shoot?

As farmers across the state swelter in the summer heat tending crops and livestock, food scientists inside a state-of-the-art 14,500-square-foot facility on the University of Georgia campus in Griffin are laboring over a different side of the agricultural equation: How can we get the biggest bang for the buck from Georgia’s food commodities?

Located in the historic Five Points neighborhood of Athens, Georgia, Condor Chocolates produces bean-to-bar chocolates, confections, gelato and beverages. Brothers and co-owners Peter Dale, who graduated from the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication in 1999 and Nicholas Dale, who graduated from UGA's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences in 2004, opened the city’s first specialty chocolate shop in 2014 as a homage to the world-class cacao of Ecuador. Visitors can witness chocolate production while indulging in handcrafted desserts. In honor of World Chocolate Day (July 7), the UGA Alumni Association sat down with Peter Dale to learn more about this alumni-owned chocolate shop.

Athens, Georgia, is known for three things — University of Georgia football, music, and food. Food is as much a part of the Athenian identity as the Bulldogs. Every weekend, football or not, restaurants around Athens are filled with both locals and students enjoying the communal environment a good local dish or beverage can offer.

Adulting is hard.

World Food Safety Day is celebrated annually on June 7. When it comes to researching ways to reduce the impact of harmful microorganisms in the food supply, the University of Georgia has an internationally recognized reputation in food safety research, with microbiologists throughout the university examining ways to improve food safety both within the U.S. and globally.  

Passion, a loaded tractor and a little guidance is all it took for 11-year-old Wesley Cleveland to begin following in his father and namesake Wes Cleveland’s footsteps, becoming a reliable workhand on the family farm. Most notably described as ‘the future of agriculture’ by many in Early County, the younger Cleveland is contributing to Georgia’s nation-leading peanut crop production — and he’s doing most of it on his own.

University of Georgia Cooperative Extension and the Georgia Department of Agriculture are partnering to offer the Using Pesticides Wisely training program in a virtual format again this year.

The University of Georgia Department of Food Science and Technology’s Kevin Mis Solval and his team of researchers have secured a nearly half-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture to aid in creating safe food ingredients from cannonball jellyfish.

A team of University of Georgia Cooperative Extension agents, led by a faculty member in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, will address consumer questions on food safety and preservation while overseeing the National Center for Home Food Preservation on an interim basis.