Introduction to Food and Our Environment

This course is a part of Food Sustainability, Mindful Eating, and Healthy Cooking, a 3-course Specialization series from Coursera.

This course is designed to help learners around the world become more sustainable eaters. Course videos can be watched in any order. Feel free to explore special areas of interest by skipping ahead and coming back to less familiar topics at a later stage. Together, we’ll explore key topics, like how food production impacts the environment and why meat production and protein consumption are often at the center of the debate around sustainability. We’ll introduce the pros and cons of different kinds of agriculture, fishing and food packaging, with a focus on how we can make more environmentally friendly decisions on a daily basis. We’ll also look ahead and explore some of the technology innovations that could become increasingly important as we look at the future of food for a growing global population. If this is the first course you’ve ever taken on food and sustainable eating, you’ll come away with concrete tips for how you can make food choices that will protect the world we hand over to the next generation. Our planet needs many people making small changes in the right direction and we’re here to help with that. If you’re an expert in food sustainability, we hope to offer you some tools that could help you to communicate key messages to others in simple, digestible ways. Whatever your level, we hope you’ll join this discussion as we explore, together, the ways in which we can all become more sustainable eaters. The beautiful story animations were scripted by Lucas Oliver Oswald and animated by Janine Van Schoor. Special thanks to: Lucas Oliver Oswald, William Bottini, Desiree Labeaud, Christopher Gardner, Sejal Parekh, Arielle Wenokur, Janine Van Schoor, Ann Doerr, Perry Pickert and the fantastic team at Friday Films.