FSHN Spring student news

A round up of FSHN student news for the Spring newsletter

This year, the Food and Nutrition Association (FNA) hosted its second annual Healthy Hustle 5k run in April and raised more than $800, which was split between the association and the Gift of Life, Michigan.

During the fall semester, FNA helped out at the CANR Small Animals Day and the ANR Olympics, and sent 55 undergraduate students to attend the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics national conference in Houston, Texas.

FNA also joined forces with the Ecological Food and Farm Stewardship club on campus to show a movie series promoting healthy local foods. This year, FNA also successfully implemented a mentor-mentee program in which each upperclassman was paired with an underclassman to help bridge the gap between students of different academic levels and create networking opportunities.

Other activities included writing letters to troops overseas, doing volunteer work through Allen Neighborhood and volunteering at Lansing's Silver Bells parade.

MSU and five other finalist teams presented products to industry judges during the annual Mars/IFTSA Product Development Competition during the Institute of Food Technologists Annual Meeting and Food Expo in Chicago, July 14-16, 2013.

The MSU team’s product is called “Minus-the-Moo!” It’s an all-natural, no-sugar-added, delicious almond milk-based frozen dessert that provides a tasty way to get fruits and vegetables into the diet.

“We worked with this product for almost a year, through many reformulations with consumer input, technical challenges and late nights,” said team captain Mara Laurain. “The team showed IFT and the food industry all that we have accomplished with our new product, which we designed to appeal to a wide range of consumers who are looking for non-dairy, lower calorie alternatives.”

The MSU team placed second in the competition out of about 25 university entries from across the United States.  In the past 12 years, MSU teams have been finalists eight times, with three first-place and three second-place rankings.

Team members were: Laurain, Edward Szczygiel, Cory Carson, William Denver and Hunter Gartner. Team adviser was Janice Harte.

“Our appreciation goes to all our industry supporters, alums and past MSU team members who continue to offer support for and advice on team projects,” Harte said.

 

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