Learner Reviews & Feedback for Stanford Introduction to Food and Health by Stanford University

Not a very high volume of material.

Very basic 101 but good refresher

Good content but extremely basic

very informative for beginners

good stuff, but a bit preachy

Good very basic information.

Achei um tanto superficial

Not available certificate

I expected to learn more.

The course is very basic

Good for healthy living

It was a basic course

basic but interesting

Needs more content/

Covers the basics.

Very basic stuff

it was alright

Not much depth

Muy basico

Very basic

Too basic

Too basic

Too easy

The course is essentially a self-help guide focusing on the idea that cooking real food promotes health. This is certainly a message that many people need to hear.

Unfortunately, the advice concerning what to eat is less sound. Let me illustrate this with a historical counterexample.

Around 75 years ago, a Canadian dentist visited my home country of Switzerland, where he examined the health and diet of a population in a secluded mountain valley. He found them to be of exceptional health. Their diet?

breakfast: rye sourdough bread, butter and cheese

lunch: rye sourdough bread, butter and cheese

dinner: rye sourdough bread, butter, cheese and potatoes, along with some vegetables in the warmer half of the year, and small amounts of meat on Sundays

Contrary to four fundamental recommendations in the course, these people ate a lot of saturated fat (butter) and animal protein (cheese), but few vegetables and had hardly any variation in their diet.

They did prepare their own food, grown or pastured locally, in very mineral-rich soil, which imparted their butter and cheese with very high amounts of fat-soluble vitamins A, D and K2. Perhaps animal foods are not as unhealthy as the course suggests, and food (and soil) quality is paramount.

Instead of taking this course, watch Maya Adam's TEDx talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-gyIkA-crM) and browse the recommendations of the Weston A. Price Foundation (http://www.westonaprice.org/) to learn what to cook, in particular their Healthy4Life dietary guidelines (http://www.westonaprice.org/wp-content/uploads/Healthy4LifeEnglish.pdf). If you still need a self-help guide to actually start cooking your own food then by all means, take this course. It'll only take you about an hour.