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Food Dude provides healthy eating tips for students

04/13/2010
By:

Carisa McLaughlin

Copy Editor

As the students filed into the Student Center theater, the smell of cinnamon in the air prepared them for the presentation they were about to see.

Kevin Roberts, also known as “The Food Dude,” came to Southern last Tuesday to talk to students about healthy eating tips from his cookbook. The smell of cinnamon, he later explained, was a recipe consisting of grapefruit, cinnamon and honey baking in the toaster oven.

“All of my recipes are toaster-oven friendly,” Roberts explained to the crowd.

Roberts said he began cooking at the age of eight because growing up in a single-parent home, he had to fend for himself. After an incident trying to use the oven at such a young age, Roberts said he accidently lit himself on fire and from that point, began using the toaster oven to cook.

“It’s definitely cool to know how to cook,” said Roberts, explaining that it defines you as an independent person and because “the opposite sex finds it very sexy.”

Roberts is also the spokesperson for Frank’s RedHot hot sauce and gave away bottles throughout the evening to students who answered his questions about healthy foods correctly.

Students in attendance said they loved the free give-aways. He not only gave away free bottles of hot sauce, but also his own recipes for audience members to sample.

Jimmy Jones, junior sociology major, was in the audience Tuesday night and said he enjoyed the presentation.

“Very entertaining,” Jones said. “Two thumbs up.”

Jones said he came to the program because he was interested in learning more about his options for cooking in a dorm room.

“I live in an apartment on campus and I have a kitchen so I cook a lot,” he said, “and I have more ingredients – raw ingredients – that I can use for cooking, so it’s nice to come just to get more ideas.”

Nick Givens, chair, and Jay Henderson, co-chair, of Programs Council’s lecture committee said the idea behind having Roberts present at Southern was for that same reason.

“A lot of people live in straight-line dorms and all we have is like Ramen and a microwave,” Givens said, adding that Roberts would be an interesting lecturer for students to learn new ideas from.

Roberts said his cookbook, “Munchies,” is all about “quick, simple, tasty, healthy recipes for college students.”

Coming from a nutrition and kinesiology background, Roberts said eating right is, “all about knowing your body from the inside out and then the cooking skills, so it’s all about tying those two together. So you’re healthy, you’re cooking, you’re surviving college.”

“Cheap burgers, cheap fries, processed cheese, sugar and soda – top five foods to avoid or at least cut down on, lay low on. You can’t eat that every day right now, at least not anymore, unless you wanna die,” Roberts.

He said his motto to live by is: “It’s the quality of life, not the quantity. It means have one good burger, not five crappy ones.”

The event was sponsored by ProCon and was the second of three lectures the committee planned for the semester. Givens said the committee structured their lectures as “educational, fun and interactive, and educational.”

“That’s what our goals have been from the very beginning and we’ve been achieving them,” he said.

The third lecture, Givens and Henderson said, is in the process of being planned for the end of April and will involve a Holocaust survivor and a movie screening. There are no dates set for this lecture as of yet.

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