Explore Stanford's Food courses!
Explore Stanford's Food courses!
Chemistry in the Kitchen
This course examines the chemistry of food and drink preparation, which makes what we consume more pleasurable. Good cooking is often considered an art more than a science, but some understanding will make the preparation and consumption of food and drink more enjoyable.
Rethinking Meat
How do we feed a growing population in the face of climate change? Will Impossible Burgers become the new norm? Are you curious to learn about a frontier in bio- and chemical-engineering and the environmental, ethical, and economic drivers for meat replacements?
Human Nutrition
The study of food, and the nutrients and substances therein. Their action, interaction, and balance in relation to health and disease. Emphasis is on the biological, chemical, and physiological processes by which humans ingest, digest, absorb, transport, utilize, and excrete food.
Feeding Nine Billion
Feeding a growing and wealthier population is a huge task with implications for many aspects of society and the environment. There are many tough choices to make. The goal of this class is to present an overview of global agriculture, and the tradeoffs involved with different practices.
Bon Appétit, Marie Curie!
This seminar is for anyone who loves food, cooking or science! We will focus on the science and biology behind the techniques and the taste buds. Each weekly meeting will include a chance to prepare classic dishes that illustrate that day's scientific concepts.
Food and Society
This class examines the forces that affect the foods human beings eat, and when, where, and how we eat them, including human labor, agriculture, environmental sustainability, politics, animal welfare, ethics, policy, culture, economics, business, law, trade, and ideology, and psychology.
Automated Model Discovery
Discovering models, parameters, and experiments to best explain soft matter systems including plant-based and animal meat. Fundamentals of physics-based modeling, deep learning, constitutive neural networks, Bayesian methods, prediction and uncertainty quantification.
Providing Safe Water
This course will cover basic hydraulics and the fundamental processes used to provide and control water, and will introduce the basics of engineering design. Students will develop a feel for the typical values of water treatment parameters and the equipment involved.
The Future of Food
One of the greatest challenges facing modern humanity is how to provide nutritious food to a growing population without contributing to human disease and destroying the environment. In this course we will examine in depth a single facet of our current food system.
Gut Microbiota in Health and Disease
This course focuses on the human gut microbiota. Students will receive instruction on computational approaches to analyze microbiome data and will complete a related project.
Food and Security
The course will provide a broad overview of key policy issues concerning agricultural development and food security, and will assess how global governance is addressing the problem of food security.
Quantitative Evolutionary Dynamics and Genomics
The genomics revolution has fueled a renewed push to quantitatively model evolutionary processes. This course provides an introduction to quantitative evolutionary modeling through the lens of statistical physics.
Quantitative Approaches in Modern Biology
Modern research tightly integrates experiments with data analysis and mathematical modeling to provide unprecedented insights into the organization and functioning of living systems. This course includes weekly dry lab sessions to analyze experimental data.
Environmental Microbiology I
Basics of microbiology and biochemistry. Principles of biochemical reactions, energetics, and mechanisms of energy conservation. Diversity of microbial catabolism, flow of organic matter in nature: carbon and biogeochemical cycles. Bacterial physiology, phylogeny, and the ecology of microbes.
Blue Foods for Indonesia
Globally, more than 1 billion people rely on seafood, yet this source of vital nutrition is chronically neglected in discussions about the future of food systems. This Action Lab will help Indonesia implement a far-reaching national program that could transform its food system.
Hunger and Food Insecurity
This course will examine local, national, and global hunger issues and solutions. We will acknowledge and examine the associations between health disparities, structural racism, systemic poverty, and the built environment that create barriers to sustainable availability and access to nutritious foods.
Synthetic Proteins and Genetic Circuits
Synthetic proteins and gene circuits are evolving technologies, central to research and medicine. Through lecture and discussion, we explore key concepts including modularity in synthetic biology, methods of protein and circuit design, and practical applications.
Food Policy and Public Health
Everyone eats. But why do we eat what we do? This course explores the forces that shape what we eat and why, with an emphasis on how organizational and governmental policies influence our food systems, from farm to grocery store to fork, from food labels to dining tables.