By John Connelly, Foundation Degree in Food Nutrition & Health, Loughry Campus

“I often wondered how diet and lifestyle affects our bodies. If you think about it, food is one of the most basic fundamental requirements for life.  So why do many people treat the production and consumption of food as a necessary but menial part of every day life?

I’m from Scotstown, Co. Monaghan, and my family are in the processed meats business. I’m a first year student studying for a Foundation Degree in Food Nutrition & Health at Loughry Campus, learning how to produce foods which are safe, wholesome and of high quality. The campus is in Cookstown and has an ultra modern Food Technology Centre where we produce a wide range of foods as part of our course. This is not a catering college so we make products on a large industrial scale. So far we’ve made everything from ice cream to ready meal portions and from smoothies to burgers. We learn how food provides our bodies with the necessary nutrients and the effect of excessive consumption of some food ingredients like salt or saturated fats on our health.  

In my Nutrition module I researched enriched milk products and couldn’t believe the work that is being done to consider how feeding dairy cows a particular type of ration affects the milk they produce which in turn affects the nutritional value of the butter or ice cream or yoghurt or cheese made from the milk. As part of the module the class visited the Bodies Exhibition in Dublin.  Among a range of displays we got to see a real human heart from a person who had heart disease as a result of being over weight and a liver of a man who had cirrhosis as a result of excessive alcohol consumption.  To see the impact of poor diet on our bodies was amazing.

There are a couple of other bonuses of studying at Loughry.  Our “make it, pack it, eat it” approach is the ideal break from sitting in a lecture room. I’m also realising I’ve made the right career choice as job prospects, even in this economic climate, are really pretty good.”

Foundation Degree in Food Nutrition & Health student John Connolly (First on left in the back row) with his class mates outside the Ambassador Theatre, Dublin.