The UA’s Nutritional Sciences Club has cooked up a variety of student participation events this semester with their campus and community involvement.
A financially independent club recognized by the Associated Students of the University of Arizona, the UA Nutritional Sciences Club’s main goal is to provide students who are interested in nutrition a chance to learn more about the topic and educate their community.
“I think this club has given students an opportunity to educate themselves before they educate the community,” said Dezi Abeyta, a nutritional science senior and president of the club. “Going into this, I had no idea what nutrition and a healthy eating lifestyle entailed.”
This semester the club is organizing food drives, becoming involved with community gardens around Tucson and attending family events to promote nutrition.
“I feel that we made connections from other departments and organizations that will help us further our volunteer work and community outreach and education next semester,” said Melissa Cudzilo, a nutritional science sophomore and vice president of the club.
Aside from partaking in a range of food drives and community activities, the club also hosted a cooking demonstration in October by the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona’s chef, Jon Wirtis, who is in the Guinness World Records for creating the world’s largest matzo ball. During the demonstration, Wirtis showed club members how to make inexpensive, quick and healthy dishes.
“It was really neat and cool learning about the cooking aspect of nutrition and how to we can implement that in to our healthy eating lifestyle,” said Brienne Berg, nutritional science sophomore and treasurer of the club.
The club has also made efforts to reach out to people through social networking sites and involvement like Facebook and Twitter, and because of this the nutritional community is taking notice. According to Cudzilo, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics was impressed with the club’s work to educate the public online that they too began tweeting and created a Facebook page that models the club’s format.
“It’s great that this national organization got this idea from our club,” Cudzilo said. “We are really proud that all of our hard work is hopefully getting nutrition information out there for everyone.”
One of the projects the club will be working on this semester is teaming up with the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona to build a new feeding site in Tucson.
“They are in need of another site for the already 5,000 people that they feed a month,” Cudzilo said. “We hope that we will be able to provide that by spring.”
They will also be working with Tucson Girl Scouts troops teaching families proper nutrition. The organization approached the club with this opportunity after they had helped in a few community events with Girl Scouts troops this fall semester.
“We are putting a lot of our members in the position of teaching community nutrition and getting that on-the-job experience where you are really personable with people,” Abeyta said.
The Nutritional Science Club only has one more event planned this semester before finals week, and that is to pass out healthy grilled cheese sandwiches on the UA Mall with the Feel Good World organization next Monday from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The club meets every other Thursday in different Student Union Memorial Center conference rooms. Though there are no more meetings planned for this semester, people who are interested in learning more about the club are encouraged to join its Facebook and Twitter accounts.
“Honesty, I am pretty happy with our club and looking forward to next semester,” Abeyta said. “Because believe it or not, I think we will be way more busier than this semester.”
