Teaching chefs to serve up a healthier food future

Food professionals studying applied culinary nutrition at Technological University Dublin are learning how nutrition and sustainability can make for healthy and delicious food

Annette Sweeney, culinary lecturer at TUD, Tallaght. Photograph Moya Nolan

We have control over what we eat at home. We shop, choose the options we want and prepare them ourselves. We can choose healthy food — or not —- for every mealtime.

But what happens elsewhere? Do we have healthy options available in the canteen at work? What about if we or a loved one end up in hospital? Or when we go out for dinner — who’s looking after our health then?

If you’re lucky, you might have one of the graduates of Technological University Dublin’s MSc in Applied Culinary Nutrition working in the kitchen and keeping an eye on what’s being served.

TUD lecturer in culinary arts Annette Sweeney designed and leads the course launched in 2015, and was the first of its kind internationally.

The two-year, part-time course came about because of research Sweeney had been doing, “looking at trends across the globe, particularly America, and also the interest that students had in nutritional needs for health and wellness”.

With a strong foundation in science, the course is a collaboration between the TUD departments of culinary arts and food science. 

“It’s geared towards working food professionals, chefs and anyone in the food profession that wants to be ahead of the curve and innovate their menus with confidence for health and wellness,” Ms Sweeney says.

These are professionals who cook in hotels, cafés and restaurants, workplace catering, healthcare facilities and hospitals, people who may be cooking your next meal.

She is keen to focus on the fact that healthy food can also be delicious: “When we think of health a lot of people think of no flavour — that’s what I wanted to change. I say healthful rather than healthy and it’s a flavour-first approach.”

As part of the course, students have to complete an industry-focused applied research project.

Past projects included advancing healthier food choices in fast-food restaurants, creating savoury desserts using up-cycled vegetables to replace sugar, innovating children’s menus for health and wellness — and using spent grain in cakes for coffee shops, which was what Dublin-based Vivienne Johnston worked on.

“I have been a chef for 30 years and would traditionally use butter, cream sugar and salt for flavour,” Ms Johnston says.

“My thoughts on a recipe now are how can I reformulate this recipe without compromising on flavour, texture mouthfeel and increase the nutritional value.”

After investigating five different coffee shop cakes for her research project, she’s now working on “a brown bread recipe using the same principle [and] increasing fibre with the addition of [high fibre spent grain product] BiaSol. My work is a work in progress,” she adds. 

“What I learnt from the course is that there is so much work that can be done as chefs to improve the health of the nation.”

The course also looks at food sustainability, focusing on the EU farm-to-fork strategy that acknowledges that the health of people, society and the planet are inextricably tied together. 

“What the EU has set out is the future of food,” Ms Sweeney says. “We need to be in this space. We need to be facilitating healthy, sustainable diets.”

Annette Sweeney, culinary lecturer at TUD, Tallaght. Photograph Moya Nolan

EU farm-to-fork strategy

Chef and publican Brian Heffernan, who owns and runs several bars in Gorey and Arklow, investigated whether current training programmes for trainee chefs were in line with the introduction of the EU farm-to-fork strategy.

A classically trained chef who completed the course this year, he credits it with completely changing the way he thinks about food. “This is an essential course that can potentially change the future of the food industry,” Mr Heffernan says, calling Sweeney “a driving force”.

He points to our growing dependency on pre-prepared and convenience foods: “Chefs can be the future gatekeepers for people’s health and wellbeing through the introduction of beneficial nutrition in people’s meals.”

Mr Heffernan’s research is having an impact on his business, as he educates his chefs on “the introduction of nutrition into dishes, but also the reduction of food waste through the use of all of the ingredients [and] through portion control.”

Food sustainability using plant by-products was the focus of chef Derek Oman’s applied research project. He is now working “with like-minded chefs to create a community in which sustainability is at its core.” By educating local communities to make “healthier and flavourful choices,” he aims to reduce food waste and positively impact health via workshops and demonstrations, using local suppliers and seasonal recipes. Working in a hotel, Oman can put theories into action: “I have the ability to test my framework and educate the current staff on changing behaviours toward reducing food waste and how to recycle plant by-products.”

“Chefs need to be able to do this because the customer is looking for it,” Ms Sweeney adds, seeing the masters as something that you “go into with an open mind, you identify gaps through your learning and try and bring that to life for other people’s health in a creative way through the food you produce or the career path you can carve out”.

Teaching chefs about nutrition, sustainability and European food systems — in a way that also focuses on flavour — is the kind of education that can cause ripples far beyond the classroom.

• Annette Sweeney will be on stage at the Food on the Edge two-day symposium on the Future of Food, which takes place at Airfield Estate in Dublin on Monday and Tuesday, October 16-17, 2023. Tickets are available at foodontheedge.ie.
• More information on the Master of Science in Culinary Arts Applied Nutrition at www.tudublin.ie.