More Than Just A Meal: Rachel Leer of Aspers Studies Food in Italy

A Lebanon Valley College student in Italy takes an interdisciplinary look at food

Related Media

Rachel Leer studies abroad in Italy.

ANNVILLE, PA (03/13/2012)(readMedia)-- The maestro casaro (master cheesemaker) at the small cooperative in the fields outside Parma had just come back from his vacation. It's only the second one he's been able to take in 35 years making 200 pound wheels of Parmesan cheese. The owners of the cooperative-12 dairy farmers who together own the small cheese factory-are pretty demanding.

"This is a painstaking process, an art," says Antonio Parentelli, stirring the huge copper kettles with his hands as students from the Umbra Institute snapped pictures. "Making perfect parmigiano means hands-on work, not punching buttons on a machine."

LVC junior psychology and philosophy major Rachel Leer of Aspers, Pa., was among the students at the cooperative, a student of the Food Studies Program (FSP) at the Umbra Institute. In addition to a rigorous classroom schedule, the students participate in a number of food workshops and field trips. The FSP encourages students to think about the fact that while we eat three times a day, we hardly ever stop to ask the basic questions about how or what we eat. Where does the food come from? Is it important that it be local or organic? What do the labels really mean? These questions are fundamental to life in our globalized world.

The three courses approach the subject from three different viewpoint: history (the traditional food course), sociology ("Sustainability and Food Production in Italy"), and business ("The Business of Food: Italy and Beyond"). Leer is in the Italian food history and auditing the Sustainability course; her visit to the cheese factory was part of a class field trip to Parma, during which students also visited a small prosciutto cooperative and a family-run balsamic vinegar shop.

Leer, responding to the question "What did you learn about Italian food culture in Parma?" said: "I never would have guessed that balsamic vinegar-the really good stuff-was so delicious that you could eat it on gelato. Yum!"

The Umbra Institute, an American study abroad program, is located in Perugia, a central Italian city known for its chocolate and 35,000 university students. Learn more about LVC's study abroad programs at http://www.lvc.edu/study-abroad.