Curriculum

The 128-credit BS program in Global Public Health/Food Studies focuses on the ways in which individuals, communities, and societies relate to food within a cultural and historical context. You’ll study topics like food science and technology, food and culture, epidemiology, marketing, nutrition, and health policy, and emerge well-prepared for a career in advocacy, policy, agriculture, food production, and more.

Core Course Sequence

College Core Curriculum (CORE)

NYU’s College Core Curriculum provides a foundational academic experience of general education in the liberal arts for undergraduates at NYU. The Core Curriculum includes courses in foreign language, expository writing, and foundations of contemporary culture and scientific inquiry. In addition to these required subject areas, students also have the opportunity to explore liberal arts electives in the topics that most interest them, gaining the skills and breadth of intellectual perspective to flourish in their major programs of study and in their later careers. 

Major and Co-Major Requirements 

You’ll take core classes in public health, including health policy, epidemiology, and environmental health, and in food studies, including food issues and systems, cuisine, research in food studies, and food science and history. You’ll expand on these foundational courses with electives in the areas that most interest you, such as bioethics or global medicine. The program includes an internship, where you’ll apply course concepts to real-world scenarios and build professional relationships in the field.

Sample Elective Courses

Environmental Health in a Global World  

This course will examine some of the key issues and principles of environmental health practice. It will focus on how environmental health issues are defined and approached by civic groups, governmental officials and researchers. It will highlight how environmental threats come to the attention of the public and weigh the options for addressing these threats. Finally, it will underscore the need for multi-disciplinary approaches in understanding these threats and crafting solutions. We will focus on prevention of environmentally mediated diseases and discuss challenges to effective prevention.

Essentials of Cuisine: International 

This course provides an introduction to the art and science of cuisine characteristics of selected world cultures through lectures, demonstrations, hands-on preparation, and field trips.

Introduction to Food History

This course examines food from historical and transnational perspectives. Topics considered include the origins of agriculture, the phenomenon of famine, the co-evolution of world cuisines and civilizations, the international exchange and spread of foods and food technologies following 1492, issues of hunger and thirst, and the effects of the emergent global economy on food production, diets, and health.