Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
Food is one of the most universal and uniting human experiences. It is a powerful tool to bring communities together and it is a simple way to bring joy to an individual. This project is an exercise in marketing and entrepreneurship that was inspired by these ideas, which culminated in a fundraiser bake sale to benefit Creighton Community Foundation, a local nonprofit.
For those families that rely on food banks as their main source of groceries for the week, it is not uncommon for the parents or children to not know how to prepare the ingredients in a way that can provide as much nutritional value as possible. A cookbook with a collection of recipes that specialize in using ingredients commonly found in food banks would be one way to help improve the physical and mental health of families while also teaching children how to cook and prepare nutritious meals at home. I was inspired to create these recipes because I wanted to work with food banks and pantries to help educate their clients about healthy eating and cooking techniques. I wanted to show families that they can cook various meals using many of the same ingredients in different ways. I also wanted to develop recipes that encourage children to cook, become more familiar with different food items, and improve their relationship with food since a significant portion of clients are children, meaning they grow up relying on the ingredients food banks offer. After finding out which recipes and other nutritional aid programs currently exist, I spoke with a few different food banks to learn what types of food are typically distributed from food banks. From there, I drafted a list of recipes, worked with AZ Health Zone to analyze the nutrients for each recipe, and revised the recipes to better meet the nutrition standards of AZ Health Zone. As of now, a handful of food pantries, including the AZ Health Zone, agreed to share my total of 9 recipes (in English and Spanish) with their clients.
